Clive Thompson – Everyone Is a Programmer Now

Clive Thompson explores how AI is changing who can build software, and what it means for creativity and work. Ten years ago at The Conference, Clive Thompson explored how Minecraft was turning a generation of young people into designers, programmers and builders – showing what happens when technology invites us to open it up, understand it and make it our own. Now, that spirit of tinkering is colliding with artificial intelligence. Programmers are handing growing parts of their work to AI, people with little technical training can build software by describing what they want, and autonomous agents are beginning to run real tasks and businesses. Drawing on his recent reporting for The New York Times, Thompson returns to Malmö to examine a profound shift in our relationship with computers: from learning how to instruct machines to learning how to collaborate with them. Who becomes a builder when coding is no longer the main barrier? What happens to expertise, creativity and work when software can help create itself? And does AI represent a new golden age of digital agency, or a move away from the deep understanding that tinkering once gave us? A decade after his The Conference talk, Clive Thompson takes stock of who gets to shape the digital world now. Speaker Clive Thompson is a journalist and author who writes about how technology changes the way we think, work and create. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired. His books include Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World (featured in our Futures Library) and Smarter Than You Think. His reporting combines deep curiosity about technology with a focus on the people, cultures and unexpected behaviours emerging around it. Context The lecture is hosted in partnership with and as a side event to Øredev, an international developers conference that offers a mashup of practical knowledge and unique experiences organised in Malmö on November 4-6.