The New Code — Sean Grove, OpenAI
In this video, Sean Grove from OpenAI introduces the idea of "The New Code," which prioritizes specifications for communicating intent over traditional coding [00:42]. He argues that the main value of a coder's work is in structured communication, not just the code itself [02:47]. Grove highlights that with advanced AI, communication is the primary bottleneck, and "vibe coding" (prompting AI) is a communication-first approach [03:55]. Written specifications are crucial for aligning teams and can be used to generate various outputs, acting as a "trust anchor" to identify and fix issues like model "sycophancy" [06:09, 12:41]. Ultimately, he suggests that specifications should be treated like code, as they are composable, testable, and can be used to align both humans and AI models [15:34].
