Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this stuff is fun to work with and use as an aid to programming. But I think what's dawning on a lot of us is that it seems to be able to facilitate a large increase productivity. And given that large productivity increase will industry need as many software developers (and other knowledge workers)?
Your opinion on this probably depends on what your job currently looks like. Everywhere I've worked there's been significantly more stuff we wanted to do than we could actually do. Speeding that up looks awesome to me. But if you work at BigCo and mostly sit on your hands already, then, yeah. I don't know.
Every BigCo I’ve worked at (and I’ve worked at places that put the B in Big) people aren’t sitting on their hands because there isn’t way more to do than they can feasibly do. It’s usually because they’re fundamentally illsuited for the job and sitting on their hands is better than being homeless, or the people who are illsuited for their jobs feel anxious about being homeless so force everyone into meetings and team building and off sites and retrospectives and sprint planning and burn down chart analysis and whatever else they can conceive of that seems productive but doesn’t change production in any way. To that extent at least an AI would be left alone to write actual code, and those folks can have their endless meetings and still justify their job the same way they ever did. No AI will ever host a breakout session at an offsite to discuss strategy for getting people to work in the horrific hotel seating dehumanized office, they’re too capable.