> Non-technical middle managers who have not written a line of code in their lives, now feel that the biggest obstacle between them and greatness has lifted.

I find it interesting how this is almost the “democratization” you mentioned that AI provides. While AI “democratizes” certain technical ability, in some ways the democratization of things can actually be bad, in that this “democratization” pushes us towards a system in which people are completely fungible, and so lose their individual bargaining capability. By democratizing this ability to the non-technical middle manager, the junior software engineer ends up losing their unique contribution and hence vote.

I read a while ago about boycotting AI if you can, and I would love to, but this issue makes me wonder if that could even be effective. If the goal is to remove every unique contribution you provide, what can you take away with a boycott?

I'm thinking of some similarity between the non-technical middle manager using agents to avoid the biggest obstacle of their developers, and a person installing a wall socket at home.

It's not too difficult to install a wall socket, but many things can go wrong, so people would normally call an electrician. In some jurisdictions you are not allowed to install it without a license, or probably you can install it only for yourself but not for anyone else if you don't have a license, and you need to call an inspector and check your work when you're done. Some other jurisdictions truly don't care, you can do whatever, and all the possible damage is on you.

Electricians are somewhat fungible, because you often don't care who will do the job for you, but the profession exists and they can pay their bills.

I wonder how far we are until, at least in some jurisdictions, a person won't be legally allowed to update the website that stores customers' data or processes payments without being a licensed software developer, and how rules, should they be adopted, will change our profession.

> in that this “democratization” pushes us towards a system in which people are completely fungible, and so lose their individual bargaining capability.

Hasn't this been the case since the power loom put hand weavers out of a job?

> individual bargaining capability

Thinking that "individual bargaining capability" capability is an especially useful thing for society as a whole is one of the things that has got us into the current Hobbesian mess

I hate the term "democratization". It's putting a respectable face on something that shouldn't be respectable at all. In the age of the internet, coding and other creative skills have always been largely democratized to people that care enough to learn. Nothing is being "democratized" by AI, there's simply (an attempt) at driving the value of actual skill to zero so the skill-less and stupid can purchase their way to mediocrity (without the benefit of transferring that money to someone who has worked to be skilled). There is NOTHING "democratic" about that.

> democratizing this ability to the non-technical middle manager

Works the other way too. Now a junior engineer can use AI to do much of what a middle manager had been doing in the past.

Frankly I think the middle manager ought to be WAY more worried than most.

Coding was always "democratized". You just had to put in the effort of learning and understanding. Finding free resources is very easy.

AI doesn't make that learning and understanding easy but just allows people to skip it.

That doesn't mean democratization at all.