Before it can replace the brilliant programmer, it needs to be able to replace the mediocre programmer. There is so much programming and other tech/it related work that businesses or people want, but can't justify paying even low tech salaries in America for.
So far, there is little chance of a non-technical person developing a technical solution to their problems using AI.
> Before it can replace the brilliant programmer, it needs to be able to replace the mediocre programmer
Nope. Compensation is exponential. Being able to replace a top performer with a fee mediocre devs pair coding with an LLM is more than fine for 90% of use cases.
> mediocre programmer won't be able to judge the allegedly expert level output any better than a non-programmer, so I don't see how that would work
Sure. Plenty of businesses are. Particularly in the commercial automation sector that numerically hires the most people.
> more likely that great programmers might just increase their productivity
For those in high-productivity, high-margin businesses, yes. For most of the world, no—the surplus productivity doesn’t outweigh the compensation and concentration risk.
I broadly expect a spate of age discrimination lawsuits in the near future because most businesses don’t need a few stars. In the meantime, I’ve watched a lot of people find two people in Brazil + an LLM equals one WFH very good (but not brilliant) coder.
This makes no sense, there are problems that 'brilliant' programmers can solve and no number of mediocre ones ones. Just like you can't substitute Mozart with 100 mediocre composers.
So far, there is little chance of a non-technical person developing a technical solution to their problems using AI.