The Future of Software Engineering Beyond the Hype of AI

ACM/IEEE ICSE 2025, the world's premiere software engineering conference, celebrated its 50th year. To mark the occasion, a panel of academics and practitioners was convened to discuss the future of software engineering. The panelists shared their views of how software engineering jobs will change, how software will continue to have an impact on society, and whether AI could be trusted to create secure software. The panel was organized and moderated by Steven Fraser (Innoxec) and Dennis Mancl (MSWX Software Experts). Panelists included Adriana Meza Soria (MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab), Landon Noll (independent), Tom DeMarco (The Atlantic Systems Guild), Laurie Williams (North Carolina State), Mary Shaw (Carnegie Mellon), Irene Manotas (IBM), and Bertrand Meyer (Eiffel Software).