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Inside Blackstone · 2 min · Sep 29, 2026

AI shifts programmers from writing code to architecting it

Eric Schmidt describes moving from writing code to directing AI, and recounts a friend assigning agents work throughout the day. The examples show how AI may change skilled work and daily workflows.

Eric Schmidt

Eric Schmidt is CEO and chair of Relativity Space, former Google CEO.

Scaled Google as CEO through 2011, now runs rocket maker Relativity Space and co-founded Schmidt Sciences.

About this segment

Eric Schmidt describes moving from writing code to directing AI, and recounts a friend assigning agents work throughout the day. The examples show how AI may change skilled work and daily workflows.

From “Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: The Road to Superintelligence”, Sep 29, 2026. Watch the full episode

Answers “Which jobs will AI replace, and which are safe?” See all 20 answers

Answers “Will AI replace software engineers?” See all 8 answers

“Now I can architect the house using the equivalent of Claude Code or OpenAI Codex or future products from Google”
Eric Schmidtat 22:57 · Inside Blackstone22:57

Takeaways

  1. Schmidt now directs code-writing tools rather than writing all the code.
  2. He sees the next generation becoming architects of software.
  3. His friend uses agents for tasks that run while he sleeps.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 11:59AI self-improvement raises an alignment problem4:50
  2. 16:38Long reasoning is advancing, but original discovery remains hard4:08
  3. 24:38AI data centers are changing software economics and operations2:57
  4. 6:15Schmidt says to take more risks as you get older2:02
  5. 9:57Technology adoption takes longer when it needs capital2:13

  6. 22:25AI shifts programmers from writing code to architecting it2:24

  7. 27:47Schmidt says students should study deep reasoning2:04Up next

Transcript

From the transcript Inside Blackstone publishes with the episode.

  1. 22:31

    They can be disciplined into focus on this and not something else. Is that important? Absolutely. So, do you think there's a productivity boom that's coming? Well, I think it's already underway. It's already underway. An example would be my entire life, according to myself, I was a very, very good programmer when I was 22, right? I was one of the best, according to myself. My field is over, right?

  2. 22:55

    And yet you still tell people to learn coding. I do because I want them to be architects. So, I went from being able, I had to build the house. Now I can architect the house using the equivalent of Claude Code or OpenAI Codex or future products from Google, which they're working on, all of which allow me to say what I want and the code gets written. I look at the code it writes now. I can't write that code.

  3. 23:21

    I couldn't when I was 22, right? So, I got beaten, right? Hard. It's okay, right, I did fine. The next generation of people like me will be the architects and they'll be very, very smart and they know how to say, this is what I want. One of my friends, some of my friends are not so friendly and they're not so social, they're kind of, so we say asocial. No naming names. I'm not gonna name anybody. So, I said, what are you doing?

  4. 23:49

    And he said, I'm deleting names from my address book. And I said, why? I don't wanna talk to them anymore. I said, what do you do all day? Well, I get up in the morning, I have coffee, and then I check with my friends. And I say which friends? He said, my agent friends. Oh God. Okay, so, what do you do? And he spends all morning plugging and playing with his agents who are solving really interesting problems to him.

  5. 24:14

    And then he gives them a one-hour project for lunch. He has lunch and he comes back and he interacts with his agents. Now he's got a wife and a family and so forth. So, at five o'clock he gives it an overnight, you know, task. Right. And it goes to work. And it goes to work, and then it typically completes between two and four in the morning. And I said, do you wake up for that? He said, no, no, no, no, I wake up naturally.

  6. 24:36

    I know, with certainty, when I wake up, I'll have a result. I was with you on everything other than that these are his friends, right? I mean, I think