Comment by hattmall

Yeah, I mean that is definitely the intent of the question and it's absolutely one of the factors that's driving money into AI.

Assisting competent engineers certainly has value, but it's not an easy calculation to assess that value compared to the actual non-subsidized cost of AI's current state.

On the other hand having a farm of idiots, or even no idiots at all, just computers, churning out high quality applications is a completely different value proposition.