Comment by akra

A lot of the fluff is all about boosting sales IMO which is where a lot of money for tech comes from. When MBA types (a large chunk of tech's buyers) hear the promises of efficiency, and replacing workers they get all excited very very quickly unless it requires lots of capital to do so - where they might instead look at cheaper labor (think offshore). AI is the ultimate SaaS product to these types, or at least how it it pitched to them it is. These people see tech workers, and IP as just "resources" - they are fungible bodies not qualified professionals. Obviously this creates a lot of technology delivery issues; and dysfunction. Places run by these types (many corporations) see technology as an expensive cost centre and secondary to the main business. I've seen this even in companies where they have to pivot to being a tech business - because of market competition they were forced to invest, but because it was reluctant investment the old culture remains. Engineers and other "builders/do'ers" are usually second class to the "decision makers" in these places. These are the places where engineers keep the place running, sometimes doing a lot of work and absolutely critical, but get paid little and receive little recognition. This is very common position for a software engineer outside the US.

With this kind of thinking often comes being a laggard in technology as you put it - engineers are a "forced necessary cost" because competitors are forcing us to keep up; not because we actually value it.

AI in their minds has vindicated their thinking hence the excitement about it. As a product it is very easy to "sell/fluff" to these kinds of people; it really excites them. They think engineers are now the expendable people they always wanted them to be rather than the people they had to put up with to get what they wanted. They were now justified in being "laggards" - they now have AI to do it cheaper than they would of had to pay an engineer before.

Yes there's a lot wrong with the thinking above, overestimation of current capabilities, etc and real innovative growth leading companies don't think this way. But the decision makers in these companies don't have that perspective. Much of technology trends, corporate hype is around things you can sell to these decision makers who often overpay for the wrong kind of technologies if you sell to them right (think typical RFQ/RFP corporate processes) - AI is an easy sell/dream to these people.