Taking a step back: Isn't it kind of daft that we humans must go through years of training to learn esoteric languages and ways of bending our brains backwards in order to tell a computer how to perform arguably simple tasks? In the ideal world, you can tell the computer what you want to happen and... it happens. If not, then you did not explain all your edge cases, and the conversation continues.
I think it can be argued that we have, seemingly overnight, made vast progress towards that world. You specifically mention code, but that concept is irrelevant in this world. Indeed, this is uncharted territory!
> Isn't it kind of daft that we humans must go through years of training to learn esoteric languages and ways of bending our brains backwards in order to tell a computer how to perform arguably simple tasks?
I always took it in another way: learning to program a computer is an enlightening, visceral experience highlighting just how bad natural language and normal modes of thinking suck. They're heavily optimized for reality in which the most important thing was managing social dynamics in small groups, and beliefs were good or bad depending on how close they are to what everyone else beliefs. Whether or not they were true at object level did not matter at all.
We live in different times now. There's a demand for clear, logical, precise thinking. The very thinking we're not well-equipped for by default. The very thinking you call "bending our brains backwards". Because object-level truth matters much more now, there are consequences for getting things wrong - such as countless of ways of getting scammed by people who are better at this than you are.
Not to mention, this "bending our brains backwards" is what gives humanity superpowers. It's what gave us all the technology we enjoy today - energy, transportation, amenities, communication, entertainment. Building and maintaining these things requires precise thinking and precise communications. So, until a super-human AI takes all that over for us (and effectively turns out into NPCs in our own story), glorifying the natural, human mode of communication is just self-handicapping.
> Isn't it kind of daft that we humans must go through years of training to learn esoteric languages
I mean, what do you propose, that we skip all the steps in computer science history and just start at the end? Hardly "daft, it's simply the best way we have come up to provide machines with instructions until now. And it's not like people have not tried other paradigms (ex: graphical programming, "low-code", etc.).
Also, compared to programming in assembly or binary, programming in Python or other high-level languages is a huge advance in itself. Python, at the end of the day, is nothing but a bridge between natural language and machine code.
> You specifically mention code, that concept is irrelevant in this world
Current computer systems run on trillions upon trillions of lines of code.
GPT-3 or Copilot don't change that fact, in fact they will continue to pile up lines of code.
They are systems that map natural language to code, by drawing from an infinitely massive corpus of code.
They bring the idea of expressing systems entirely in natural language one step closer, but it's still very far away - almost a pipe dream.
The output of these innovations is still code. So tell me again how code has become irrelevant, or how people who do not understand code at all will be able to leverage these advances?
I think it can be argued that we have, seemingly overnight, made vast progress towards that world. You specifically mention code, but that concept is irrelevant in this world. Indeed, this is uncharted territory!