Because a high level developer will still have to fix all the shit the AI gets wrong, and therefore won't be "2x more productive" like I read in many places.
If they're that much better with AI, they were likely coding greenfield CRUD boilerplate that nobody uses anyways. When the AI generated crap is actually used, it becomes evident how bad it is.
But yes, this will reduce team sizes regardless of it being good or not, because the people making those decisions are not qualified to make them and will always prefer the short-term at the cost of the long-term.
The only part of this article I don't see happening is programmers being way more expensive. Capitalism has a way of forcing everyone to accept work for way less than they're worth and that won't change.
I'd say this is a lot of wishful thinking. Personally, I know that I'm more productive with AI. In my personal projects, I can tackle bigger projects than what would have been possible otherwise.
Will that reduce the demand for programmers? I hope not, but it's plausible at least.
I've used and still use AI, but it would be wishful thinking to say I'm significantly more productive.
As you just said: in your personal projects - that 99.9% of the time will never be seen/used by anyone but you - AI helps. It's a great tool to hack and play around when there are little/no stakes involved, not much else.
I believe it will reduce demand for programmers at least for a while, since companies touting they're replacing people with AI will learn its shortcomings once the real world hits them. Or maybe they won't since the shitty software they were building in the first place was so trivial that AI can actually do it.
If they're that much better with AI, they were likely coding greenfield CRUD boilerplate that nobody uses anyways. When the AI generated crap is actually used, it becomes evident how bad it is.
But yes, this will reduce team sizes regardless of it being good or not, because the people making those decisions are not qualified to make them and will always prefer the short-term at the cost of the long-term.
The only part of this article I don't see happening is programmers being way more expensive. Capitalism has a way of forcing everyone to accept work for way less than they're worth and that won't change.