It's not an affordability crisis, it's a financial crisis. The models get cheaper super fast. By this time next year Fable 5 will cost less than Sonnet does today. That's not the problem. The problem is that many companies are going to realize that they don't get any ROI from AI. Generating code faster != more profit. Most of the Fortune 500 will likely realize this and then the token budgets will come crashing down. Most of their ideas are _bad_ ideas. Implementing bad ideas faster, won't lead to more profit.

Sure, you can use AI to potentially replace software engineers, but the F500 are also terrified of not having accountability or making mistakes. They won't be firing any engineers. In that scenario, there's just no room for AI usage. If you have to be responsible for all the code, then... AI has to either manage it completely autonomously (which even Fable can't) or... humans have to be in the loop which means they still have to understand the code. The best way to understand the code is to write the code yourself. So there's no productivity gain to be had.

I'm pro-AI, but I think we're due for a big crash next year.

Its very interesting how you are contradicting the whole article's axioms and then arriving at the same conclusion that we are in for a crash!

I feel like this is way too binary. I don't have to write every line of code myself to understand the system. I don't write my own compiler HTTP stack or database either

It's more about the level of abstraction. If AI handles 80% of the grunt work and I spend my time on architecture and reviews that's still a win