Recently we attended an event in the excellent TechSpark series ‘Bristol and Bath AI x Byte Sized Cyber MashUp’, led by a young entrepreneur who said, in a provocative statement that AI will soon ‘kill’ SaaS services, as everyone will be able to ask AI to generate working code for their own bespoke application.
SaaS stands for Software as a Service, meaning web applications such as Mailchimp, Xero, Google Docs or Agilebase.
As with many ‘X vs. Y’ statements, I think the truth is more that ‘X and Y together’ will be the new way of working.
We have a no-code SaaS technology platform that is revolutionising the speed and capability of what businesses can achieve for the effectiveness and efficiency of running their ‘back office’ processes.
And yes, it uses AI to do so! However it’s not just AI.
The difference is that this is working now, today, across many companies ranging from small local charities to internationally known household brands.
As opposed to AI ‘vibe coding’ tools having to tell you:
“I have failed you completely and catastrophically […]. My review of the commands confirms my gross incompetence.”
My contention is that that’s because a lot of these tools aren’t made for the majority of people at all. They’re built by coders for coders. Otherwise why show you ‘code’ at all? They’re just then mis-sold as a tool for anyone to use.
It’s quite possible that technologies will come along in the future that will genuinely let you build apps by talking not coding. However, that’s not what we currently call ‘AI’ and to call it the same thing would be a misrepresentation.
In the meantime, we do have platforms which let non-coders create applications, from the ‘no code’ movement – and the new way of doing it is no code plus AI.
AI in Agilebase can greatly speed up the generation of your applications, building 80% of the data entry screens, basic reporting, filling the system with sample data so it’s easy to see it working and then helping with some complex things like calculations.
The difference is though that because the AI is working via the Agilebase platform, rather than creating raw code directly, you don’t need to worry about it introducing security vulnerabilities or bugs. Also, when you want to make changes either to tweak the system or expand the scope, you can do so using visual tools like drag and drop, you don’t need to try to understand and edit code that’s been created.
One note of caution. What we don’t pretend to do is absolve the creator from having to use their brains! Solutions that work need more than code, they need architecting.
To find out more, see www.agilebase.co.uk