Kevin Scott, the CTO of Microsoft, expects 95 percent of code to be AI-generated in the next five years. JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images 2025-04-03T15:38:06Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Kevin Scott, the CTO of Microsoft, says 95% of code will be AI-generated within five years.In a podcast interview, he said he doesn't expect humans to be entirely cut out of programming.He said AI tools will allow smaller teams to tackle larger-scale projects.Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott expects the next half-decade to see more AI-generated code than ever but that doesn't mean human beings will be cut out of the programming process."95% is going to be AI-generated," Scott said when asked about code within the next five years on an episode of the 20VC podcast. "Very little is going to be line by line is going to be human-written code.""Now, that doesn't mean that the AI is doing the software engineering job, and so I think the more important and interesting part of authorship is still going to be entirely human," he added.Scott said he's been programming for 41 years long enough to watch the industry undergo a similar shift while he was a child in the 80s."In the transition from Assembly language programming to high-level language programming, like there were some old farts who would say like, 'You're not a real programmer if you don't know how to write in Assembly language, and that's the only real coding, and the way to do things the right way," he said. "Nobody talks about that anymore."What's occurring with artificial intelligence, in Scott's opinion, isn't too different. Scott said "the very best programmers" will adjust to the incorporation of AI into their routines."We've gone very quickly from developers being skeptical about these tools to like, 'You will get this from my, you know, cold dying fingers. I think of this as like one of the most essential tools in my toolkit and I will never give it up,'" he said.Though Scott believes AI is capable of lowering the barrier of entry to coding, he said it'll still be necessary to employ programmers with solid understandings of niche problems."Think about this as sort of raising everyone's level. So, it makes everybody a programmer and you no longer have to go get someone to make a website for you," Scott said. "But if you are trying to solve the word the world's hardest computational problems, I think you're going to need computer scientists, and they're going to use these tools insanely well."What AI is likely to do, he added, is cut out the middle-man when it comes to simpler, more personal needs. Instead of waiting for a developer to anticipate your need for a particular tool, he said, you'd ideally be able to use AI programs to build it yourself."You have teams of people whose job is to go anticipate a bunch of very granular user needs in some narrow space and then they're going to go write a bunch of code, and then figure out how to hang that code onto some user experience, and they hope that they've done a good enough job," he said."That's going to change. Like you just aren't going to need as much of that anymore," he added.Though the responsibilities assigned to engineers may eventually look different, Scott doesn't believe the role itself will go extinct. And much like Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, who expects AI-assisted coding to help a team of 10 engineers do the work of 100, Scott thinks that AI should ideally enable smaller groups to take on large-scale projects."I'm hoping that it will get easier for small teams to go do big things," Scott said. "The reason that's important is, I think small teams are just faster than big teams are. You can do a lot with like 10 really great, super motivated engineers with really powerful tools."Recommended video