A scenario of how AI-assisted programmers might *not* experience a dramatic decrease in employment capacity:
Today, popular programs often take tens or even hundreds of programmers to develop over many years. These programs are a huge investment and try to service as many users as possible. Let's say they 80% satisfy 99% of users for some industry or slice of use cases. Think apps like Photoshop, Notion, Asana, Autodesk, Salesforce, Grand Theft Auto 5, etc.
Most users experience some amount of friction for their workflows (80% satisfied), but the industry has fully adopted them so we adapt around their limitations.
In a post-AI world, we can imagine a much wider variety of programs that are tightly fitted to 100% satisfy a smaller subset of use cases and user bases. When it's a much smaller investment to build something, we can get more variety of things people build and service a smaller set of customers to make this economic.
Instead of having one Photoshop with thousands of features developed over millions of person hours and servicing millions of customers, we may have hundreds of apps that hyperfocus on narrow workflows that perhaps only hundreds of people.
A customer who is 100% satisfied may be willing to pay more because they no longer have to string together several different tools to work around the quirks of using a more generic tool.
In this scenario, we end up with many programmers working on a larger variety of products servicing smaller numbers of customers. Programs become more bespoke and even disposable, as we gain confidence in commissioning a workflow like a perfectly tailored suit for a demanding occasion.
We'll still have slow-moving megalith projects that underpin much of the world (like the Linux Kernel or Ethereum), but we'll grow a much bigger long-tail of very narrow yet perfect solutions just for you.
