Many people are missing the point. The strategy for AI usage is not a long-term strategy to make the world more productive. If companies can save a buck this year, companies will do it. Period.
The average manager has short-term goals that needs to fulfill, and if they can use AI to fulfill them they will do it, future be damned.
To reign in on long-term consequences has always been part of government and regulations. So, this kind of articles are useful but should be directed to elected officials and not the industry itself.
Finally, what programmers need is what all workers need. Unionization, collective bargaining, social safety nets, etc. It will protect programmers from swings in the job market as it will do it for everybody else that needs a job to make ends meet.
Software ENGINEERS could benefit from unions once they get start getting replaced by AI, but that’s a fairly indirect way to solve the problem. Governments will eventually need to deal with mass unemployment, but that’s a societal problem bigger than any individual profession.
What Software ENGINEERING needs is standards and regulations, like any other engineering discipline. If you accept that software has become a significant enough component in society that the consequences of it breaking etc are bad, then serious software needs standards to adhere to, and people who are certified for them.
Once you have standards, the bar to actually replace certified engineers is higher and has legal risk. That way, how good AI needs to be has a higher (and safer) bar, which can properly optimise for the long term consequences.
If the software is not critical or important enough to be standardised, then let AI take over the creation. At that point, it’s not really any different to any other learning or creative endeavour.
The average manager has short-term goals that needs to fulfill, and if they can use AI to fulfill them they will do it, future be damned.
To reign in on long-term consequences has always been part of government and regulations. So, this kind of articles are useful but should be directed to elected officials and not the industry itself.
Finally, what programmers need is what all workers need. Unionization, collective bargaining, social safety nets, etc. It will protect programmers from swings in the job market as it will do it for everybody else that needs a job to make ends meet.