> If you cannot afford the hundreds of dollars a month Claude costs

Employers will buy AI tools for their employees, this isn't a problem.

If you're saying that you need to buy and learn these tools yourself in order to get a job, I strongly disagree. Prompting is not exactly rocket science, and with every generation of models it gets easier. Soon you'll be able to pick it up in a few hours. It's not a differentiator.

I need side projects and OSS contributions to get hired as a new graduate or an intern. The bar for both of those will be much higher if everyone is using AI.