How AI Is Changing Code - Paul Ford with Nicholas Thompson

In the last year, AI has arguably made more progress in coding than in any other domain. Its technical capabilities – harnessed through apps like Codex and Claude Code – have changed the way engineers work. Boris Cherny, Anthropic’s head of Claude Code, claims that 100% of his output is now generated by AI. But what does the rapid advance in coding tools mean for engineers and businesses? To answer that, Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, sits down with engineer, author, and entrepreneur Paul Ford. The two discuss how AI has changed his work, its implications for a range of industries, and their missed opportunity to start a billion-dollar business (maybe). (00:00) Introduction (01:53) Writing vs. Engineering: Which profession has been transformed more by AI? (03:23) The pitfalls of AI writing and the limits of AI agents (04:09) How AI has changed the code development business model (09:01) "Vibe coding": Paul Ford's personal experience building products through AI prompts (10:47) "Death is coming" - The feeling of watching entire industries dissolve (12:54) Where consensus programming thrives under AI assistance, and where it struggles (15:18) Why making good software remains difficult despite faster code generation (17:05) The restaurant review problem: The experiential engineering tasks that AI can't replicate (21:33) Can you ship AI code without a human reviewing it? (23:01) Will AI become self-recursive? How code runs, finds bugs, and self-corrects through iteration (26:58) Engineers can produce 50x more code than before. What does that mean for PMs and design teams? (29:46) Velocity vs. quality: Can AI genuinely upskill mid-level talent or just increase output speed? (35:32) Should you teach your kids to code? (38:36) What we learned from not building Grammarly (42:04) Beyond agents: Incremental improvements and classic software-in-the-loop hybrid approaches Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices