Furniture used to be made by hand. Then factories came along and furniture makers became furniture assemblers. The quality wasn’t the same but you could create it more quickly and for a cheaper price. For many consumers, the trade off between quality and price was fine.

This draws parallels with what’s happening in the software industry - we’re essentially making software factories and programmers are becoming ‘assemblers’.

The thing is, there is still a market for handmade furniture. The market is smaller than it used to be and there are less furniture makers but some people are willing to pay more for quality.

To say AI is going to ruin the world is a bit of a stretch. There will be software developers who are happy working in the factory assembling lesser quality products and there will be software developers who want to create higher quality products that stand out. I can see a market for both of these things. Whether you can achieve the latter with AI agents is the real question. I’m yet to see it.