Karpathy at Sequoia AI Ascent: 'Software 3.0' — Agents Are Interns, the Spec Is the New Code

Techloy·high signal

At Sequoia Capital's AI Ascent 2026, Andrej Karpathy declared Software 3.0 as 'prompting an LLM interpreter,' with December 2025 as the tipping point when agentic coding went from 'helpful but messy' to consistently correct. He called AI-generated code 'awkward' and 'gross,' comparing current agents to interns who need supervision on 'aesthetics, judgment, taste.' His key thesis: the specification/plan is becoming the new code, with agents executing detailed documentation while humans manage the architecture.