Or, you can be like many modern CTOs: AI will likely get better and eventually be capable of mostly cleaning up its own mess today. In which case, YOLO - your startup dies, or AI is sufficiently advanced enough by the time it succeeds. The objections about quality only matter if you think it’s going to plateau.

That is, literally, faith-based business management. "We suck, sure - but wait, a miracle will SURELY happen in version 5. Or 6. Or 789. It will happen eventually, have faith and shovel money our way."

If the AI gets that good, what value does your startup add?

I suspect it's going to tank instead of getting better, no matter what they try to do with attention or agents or whatever, especially if it's training on AI-written code of which there will be more and more of as time goes on. I'm not an AI expert by any means, so take that with a grain of salt.