Cognition’s Scott Wu says AI coding agents shouldn’t replace humans - BERITAJA

Cognition CEO Scott Wu made headlines again this week erstwhile his two-year-old AI coding supplier startup raised $1 cardinal astatine a $26 cardinal valuation. Cognition is the shaper of Devin, 1 of the first and, arguably, about successful AI coding agents. Devin, the CEO says, “naturally owns tasks extremity to end.”

In fact, successful the blog post announcing that raise, Cognition laid retired a imagination wherever “we are shifting to a world of self-driving package development.”

So, could Devin replace, say, a mid-level L4 programmer? Yes, and no, Wu told TechCrunch. “We’ve ne'er thought about it arsenic replacing humans. I cognize it’s for illustration a scenario, folks person said these things. It has ne'er been our view.”

In this chaotic twelvemonth of 2026 erstwhile each time another tech CEO announces layoffs successful the sanction of supplanting workers pinch AI, Wu says he particularly doesn’t want coders to suffer their jobs. “We are each programmers ourselves,” he explained. “I started coding erstwhile I was nine.”

In fact, Wu has been called 1 of the about accomplished kid competitory programmers of each time, according to a caller floor plan successful Colossus. As a second-grader, Wu won a nationwide mathematics title for seventh-graders, which launched a puerility filled pinch mathematics and programming tournaments. It besides introduced him to different wunderkinds who went connected to motorboat different AI tech startups, for illustration Scale AI laminitis Alexandr Wang.

So, he tells TechCrunch, the thought was ne'er to make quality programmers obsolete.

“When we started building Devin, it’s benignant of funny thing,” he mused, “but we really conscionable thought of it as: this is your buddy who helps you build more.” In fact, he showed disconnected a small stuffed animal holding a computer, his ain Devin teddy carnivore of sorts, that he keeps connected his desk. He thinks of it arsenic a beingness awesome of the Devin AI coder “This is my buddy that helps you build more.”

Wu doesn’t want AI agents to return the joyousness of programming distant from people.

“It’s not a secret, about package engineers emotion building software, right?” he said. “If you inquire them why, what they’ll fundamentally show you is, ‘Well, it’s for illustration I get to build things from nothing. I could make my full thought that I have, and move it into a product. I could move it into an experience.’”

Just for illustration ocular improvement environments abstracted package creation distant from instrumentality instructions, he views agents arsenic different furniture of abstraction betwixt envisioning a package merchandise and producing it.

Yet, Cognition says that Devin’s domiciled successful its ain institution is to vessel about each the software. The institution says that 89% of codification committed by its engineers was committed by Devin, and the remainder by section agents successful Windsurf, the AI coding competitor it acquired past year.

Wu explains that his agent’s domiciled is mostly to do the kinds of long-tail attraction tasks that galore programmers don’t for illustration to do anyway: bringing aged package up to date; moving applications disconnected 1 level and onto another. Agents will free programmers “from a batch of the toil, and truthful they could do overmuch much of the creation side,” he promises.

So Wu bristles astatine the thought of Devin “replacing” quality coders. While he says it could activity independently, it useful astatine “somewhere betwixt a inferior and a mid-level engineer” depending connected the task astatine hand.

As for the conception of self-driving software, wherever the supplier learns and improves itself truthful that 1 day, it will activity astatine higher levels (“recursive” is the latest buzzword successful AI these days), Wu says. “I deliberation we are successful for a chaotic ride.”

He sees agents entering different fields wherever they will study tasks, from customer work to medicine, but hopes the extremity will beryllium to augment quality workers successful those areas, too.

“Code and package has been the first to move, but we’ll spot this hap successful each these different industries,” he predicts. “One point that’s been clear to america since the opening is, it should ever beryllium up to the quality what to do … you really spot this successful package engineering, but I deliberation it’s existent successful each these different professions too.”