> It seems almost certain to me that AI is going to increase the surface area of what it’s possible for programs to do and therefore massively induce demand for more programs

Have we seen any of that yet? If anything, the most popular modern projects out there are all AI tooling, basically recursive software to help with using AI. Have you seen any truly novel software that solves new problems? Even before AI, I've been worried that most of the problems that were possible and viable to solve have run dry, leading to tech chasing hype and the next big thing over practical issues that have already been scooped up by someone else. What new problems have been added?