Artificial Intelligence and the Developer

 Connor Hsuan

Professor Horgan

HST 401

26 January 2026

I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System.



Artificial Intelligence and the Developer

With the continued growth of the AI industry, developers have been rapidly adjusting to how this new technology is used in their industries. As a Computer Engineer with experience in software development, I have been looking at how I can use and develop AI ever since it exploded in interest in the past 5 years. As more money is being pushed into the growing AI field, it has become increasingly apparent that developers need to understand the strengths and challenges of AI to compete in the future.

One of the biggest trends to come out of the past few years is the increased use of AI by companies, both for software development and within their products. Many companies that have tried to integrate AI have spent insane amounts of money in the ongoing research and development for these new AI models. As an example, over the period of twelve months, ending in October 31 2025, NVIDIA has spent 16.699 billion dollars in research and development, with a significant amount of this budget being spent on AI research (2025). Developing for AI has been an extremely expensive endeavor and many AI companies, such as OpenAI, require developers to pay a hefty sum to use their API. This poses a massive barrier to entry for startup companies and individual developers as they may not be able to afford the hefty licensing fee.

However, some companies have chosen to make their AI models “open source”, which is an inherently more enticing offer for developers. One such company is DeepSeek, a Chinese company that released their R-1 model in January 2025, with the notable decision to have it be open source. This has allowed companies to download the model for free and customize it to suit their needs (Jamali 2026). This is also extremely impactful on the developer side as the training and customization of new AI models has been made accessible for those that cannot afford to pay for an API key. Outside of the monetary advantage, another benefit of open source software for developers is the level of control that a developer can have on their project. With an open source model, developers have access to the source code and can change it to suit their project (Momentum Systems 2016). While OpenAI has developed and released open source models in the past, their main focus has been on their paid models. The future of AI development will likely be heavily influenced by the accessibility of this technology, as more and more developers try to break into this field.

Another kind of AI that has specifically been created to assist developers is the coding companion. A coding companion is an AI made to look over code for potential errors and point them out to the developer. Models like Claude AI and Github Copilot can analyze potential issues, generate tests, and even add suggestions to fix bugs or improve time complexity (JP 2025). These AI companions are not without their issues though. The biggest issue with all of these is that they cannot catch issues that they were not trained for. If a developer is too reliant on these tools, then they may miss bugs that the tool also misses (JP 2025). Coding companions still remain an excellent way to make developers more efficient, as long as they are not too reliant on it.

As AI and its uses become more fleshed out, we will start to see it settle into roles where it is most effective. While I only talked about how AI affects Software developers like me, AI will also have a huge impact on large companies and consumers. AI is still a growing industry and how it will affect our lives in the long run is still largely unknown. This is certainly worth exploring as it will have a significant effect on our future.












Work Cited

“NVIDIA Research and Development Expenses 2012-2025 | NVDA.” Macrotrends, https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NVDA/nvidia/research-development-expenses.


Jamali, Lily. “Is China quietly winning the AI race?” BBC News, BBC, 23 Jan. 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86v52gv726o.


Momentum Systems. “5 Advantages of Open Source Software.” Momentum Systems, 14 May 2016, updated 14 Mar. 2023, https://www.momentumsystems.com.au/advantages-open-source-software/.


JP. ​​“How AI Helps With Code Reliability.” DataAnnotation Tech, 7 Nov. 2025, https://www.dataannotation.tech/developers/how-ai-helps-with-code-reliability?&worker_source=G&utm_source=google&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=20429741244&utm_adgroup=153001519820&utm_content=695853277331&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20429741244&gbraid=0AAAAAqBNCsVbBGeij0PmyW1eC2oauzQpr&gclid=Cj0KCQiAhOfLBhCCARIsAJPiopPcegax8IPhf6-hr7WU6rFAj8ceCAkzmjkOyQk_BBgbqkGb70kdq98aAqrREALw_wcB.

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