If the hype is true, then AI-generated code will soon need no review at all. Programmers will be totally useless. Managers will be able to spend ten hours each quarter doing the work of a hundred programmers. You would be better off moving into management now, because that's the only place code will be seen. Open-source projects will also be abandoned, since AI will generate the kernel tailored to your CPU, motherboard, peripherals, and applications. The AI companies say that AI will eliminate all jobs. They sincerely mean all jobs.

But how do you know that AI companies will stick around? Those companies rely on excitement among people like programmers to pay subscriptions. But when the next recession puts a lot of those people out of work, they will cancel those subscriptions in order to pay for rents/mortgages and food. AI hasn't delivered on the promise of a work-free world, so we still have to pay our bills. No subscriptions means the AI companies will lose their only revenue stream. Why woudl a VC invest in companies whose revenue vanished? During the next recession, a lack of programming skills and a lack of AIs will be the worst scenario for many programmers. Whatever company you work for will struggle under the weight of you and other programmers who can't do anything except review code, debug code, and write complex code. The simple, repetitive code will be un-writable -- the simple things will become arcane.

There are already posts on HN bemoaning the loss of programming skills due to AI use. A generation for whom the simple and boring things might already be arcane.