There is still some use to having someone else supervise it and/or test it etc. But most of that gap could probably be closed by setting up your harness so that it can efficiently do the end to end testing including UI itself. Recent model releases seem to know how to set up playwright or whatever and test the live page on its own. But I still see some improvement to be made when I look at it myself.
I would say 90% of outsourced developers are going to use AI just like someone making top US dollar. Actually for the majority of projects on Upwork, the need to generate with AI is much greater. And I think it's nonsense the idea that an overseas programmer can't figure out how to make adequate requests to a frontier model.
The models are smart enough that someone could literally just say "convert to Rails 8 like you are real real good best Railsdev" and follow up with a few "now test and make the bestest code Base" and if they are repeating that maybe with a few different leading models.. will a real Rails dev be able to find some fault? Sure. Would they have also found issues with the work of another human Rails dev? Yes probably.I just don't think it takes as much actual skill at this point. And certainly there is no secret ability that people in San Francisco have but not in Bangladesh or only certain neighborhoods or whatever.
One guy I was talking to said he was frustrated because his developer was not using AI enough. I came to the conclusion based on his requirements and relatively generous project timeline that that developer was deliberately avoiding using AI or admitting that he was using AI because he knew if he did then the main project phase would be finished in less than a month.
It does help dealing with what previously were often impossible timelines. Recently my Upwork profile has focused on AI agents so I have not been seeing many of those typical line of business type jobs.
But also more than half of those more typical business web apps are now starting with "I have already generated a prototype" and they want it to be made. "production ready" which I think contractors are taking advantage of how vague that is especially since the majority of these projects have pretty modest actual usage. I actually don't like that because it's much less concrete than delivering actual features.