Riding the wave of AI

Let's face it: ChatGPT has made coding a stupid activity.
Not software engineering, which still involves design, architecture, and thinking.
Take debugging. Before chatGPT, you had to read the error message from the command line, and painfully throw printouts across your code - or worse use a debugger - to decipher the type of the object and understand the source of the error.
These times are gone. Now, you copy the error message - dare you even read it ! - copy it to chatGPT, and get a human-readable explanation of the error and a solution to your problem that works 90% of the time.
Do I feel stupid as a developer? sure! GitHub says that AI improves developer productivity by 50%. I am not sure how they came up with that number, but it seems way way underestimated. Here is a proof. Take a list of 100 strings. Type it yourself. Then copy it in chatGPT. It will retype it - probably 10 times faster than you do. 10 times faster is ... 1000%, not 50%. So to get to those official 50%, humans need to be way better than AI at some tasks. I cannot name a single one though.
According to Layoffs.FYI, tech layoffs have been huge in 2023

While the 2020 layoffs are easily attributable to COVID, there are two possible causes of the 2023 layoffs: the macroeconomic background (inflation, higher rates, the war in Ukraine) or ... you guessed it ... AI. While programmers are still needed, you now need a fraction of the programmers you used to hire in a single project.
So, is AI cannibalizing our jobs? Interestingly, 2024 will see a pause in rate hikes. While it is still forecasted to be a recession year, the pressures on the economy should gradually fade.

Therefore, a good framework for thinking about this is as follows. In 2024-2025:

if (recession fades) and (tech layoffs continue):
    return: AI is coming for your job
if (recession continues) and (tech layoffs continue):
    return: You are not doing well anyway
if (recession fades) and (hiring starts again):
    return: AI is your friend
if (recession continues) and (hiring starts again):
    return: miracle!

Let's analyze this through the prism of history:

• Bad scenario: During the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of the workforce consisted of workers, stacked up in factories and coal mines, earning ultra-low salaries, and working insane hours. Programmers could become exactly like that. With time, a class system appears, with true engineers living a decent life, while programmers struggle
• Good scenario: AI proves to be that productivity shock that opens new areas of technology and development, spurring demand for technologists in all economic sectors, and making the demand for quality developers outweigh the supply.

Let's now analyze the current situation from an economic perspective. Today we are in the presence of

• A productivity shock: Economists have long been waiting for the holy productivity shock that would save us all. According to economic theory, only productivity shocks can increase potential output, which is the fundamental output, if you will. As always, technology came to save humankind here. but this should not be at the expense of technologists!
• A supply shock: On the one hand, the supply of technology workers has increased tremendously. Bootcamps, Coursera, and Udemy are to blame. The democratization of tech education has created a huge pool of new technology workers. However, this pool is not necessarily talented. A 6 month bootcamp will not make you an engineer. This category is probably the "factory worker" of the future.
• A demand shock: on the other hand, the negative demand shock, stemming from higher rates, a bad economy, and war, has muted tech investment and caused waves of layoffs.

Overall the way I see it is that the future will be a U curve. At first, in the short term, companies will struggle to incorporate AI into their process. The productivity gains from AI will slowly materialize. Economic recession, inflation, and higher rates will continue. This will be a tough ride for developers.

In the mid-term, however, economic growth and AI incorporation in company processes should spur demand for developers, creating a new golden age for the good ones - the engineers.

In the long run, however, Q*, AGI, and Absolute, omnipotent intelligence, will be a real threat to all humans, not just developers. Science fiction will become reality. As Elon Musk said "Mark my words, AI is much more dangerous than nukes. It scares the hell outta me. It's capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows." :)

My advice to you fellow developers is Churchill's "If you're going through hell, keep going". You need to survive the coming trough, financially, and emotionally, while accumulating skill and knowledge, to be better positioned for the growth to come. All before the world ends!