You are painting with very broad brush strokes, and I will keep that pattern, but I want to call it out up-front.

I'm actively looking to hire great developers. However, what constitutes are "great" developer has shifted a lot (IMO anyway.) I don't need the most cracked technical coder. I need people who can listen, who can empathize and hear the "problem under the problem" that my clients describe. I need an optimist who can find the good in people and in life.

My company is on a rocket ship trajectory and we just build custom business software for people. Maybe the ride will end soon, but so far I've had nothing but gain from the rise of agentic AI because my role was never about typing on a keyboard, it was always pain management, empathy, and solving problems. It's just that now I can do that faster while paying more attention to the user experience, with code that's twice as robust, and say "yes" way more often than I used to.

I don't see dystopia. But I do see a Great Shakeup (if it's not already happening.) The answer is adaptation. It always has been. That's what makes humans so cool. We're nothing if not adaptation machines.

I don't know about you, but no agent was able to write the code I make to this day.

Agents have been useful at providing examples, and quickly searching through errors.

But humans can sense context in a way no machine, to this day, has been able.

Also I see it highly unlikely that a person can understand the output of an agent, if they aren't familiar with the work itself.

Agents are more like assistants. The complement, not substitute, an already capable professional.

This professionals often have to steer the wheel, so the agent looks elsewhere, and it doesn't continue looping into nonsense.

Ahh, the angst of the replaced. The lament of every profession squashed since the industrial revolution.

Funny, I don't remember this wailing when every other industry was destroyed. When cars replaced horses, planes replaced ships, computers replaced typists, phones replaced travel agents.

But replace the programmers? Woe is us, the end of humanity is here. How do we save ourselves from the machines?

I'm doing my very best to not let my skills atrophy. I have gotten a lot of benefit from AI in certain cases. I co-own a SaaS with a TON of tech debt, and AI has been helpful for reducing some of the tedium of migrating through 3 Django versions, but I will never be one of those people who brags about "not opening an IDE in 6 months" like I recently saw on this board.

IMO the best path is global regulation on frontier AI development with high penalties for defection that, detectable and enforced by member states, independent agencies and broad public support.

We're opening Pandora's box. I think outside of global coordination against large training runs (backed with military force) it's too late at this point. Failing that, without some massive geopolitical event, progress will continue.

Given this, I think doom is now almost certain, but there are 3-levels of doom, including one you can prep for, and one you can prep to not partake in.

We're not going to control it, we're not going to slow the pace. We might be able to bring it to a halt if people in power get extremely serious very fast, but we're so far from that that realistically it's not happening.

Sorry.

who's "we" here? because i can't really relate.

you sound more concerned about your job security than getting the job done itself.

with AI our role just transcends to being captains of the ship, plotting marks in the map and steering the wheel as AI does the rowing of the oars.

i do understand how much enjoyable it is rowing the oars ourselves but it's time to take the wheel, cap.