Elon Musk Says the Next Step Is Deleting Source Code Entirely and Having AI Emit Binaries — 7.1M Views, 738-Comment Pushback on r/singularity
Replying on August 3 to Tesla engineer James Douma's 'I might never look at the source again,' Musk wrote that source code is 'on the verge of becoming like assembly' and the next step is 'getting rid of source code entirely and just making an efficient binary directly with AI' (24,535 likes, 7.1M views). The r/singularity thread hit 615 upvotes with an unusually high 738 comments, and the top-voted rebuttal is technically specific: compilers earned trust because the source→assembly mapping is deterministic and inspectable, while a stochastic generator emitting machine code loses review, diffs, debugging, auditing, and target portability across ARM/x86/wasm/RISC-V. The counter-argument builders should sit with: if English prompts become the durable artifact, any precise specification of program behavior converges back into being a programming language.
↳ Follow the thread