This reads less like "new product category" and more like "oh f*ck, people can't afford our products any more."

The only way to get AI to work on big projects (and by work I mean say 80% of the way), it requires an existing, skilled, experienced programmer. The problem is not writing the code. The problem is writing the right code at the right time in the right place. None of the people attaching their existence to this train understand this. You can tell by how easily impressed they are by LLMs in general (and how they think they represent some form of consciousnessâ"oblivious that it's just math). This is said by someone who uses these things daily as a power tool. Most, sadly, are looking at it as the Second Coming. That will be paid for in terrible, terrible ways. Both for the individuals buying in and those of us at the edges, entangled in whatever bullshit these people release on the world/convince the powers that be that, yet again, the common man needs to be the jugholder for rich people's failed ejaculate.

It's no coincidence that as AI-driven development has become a thing, more and more critical services and infrastructure have started to have major outages. They know it doesn't work how they say it does and they know that they've already hit the plateau level where increasing compute won't magically improve inference abilities. They'll end up paying far more to beg back the developers they fired thinking they were clever.

Ironically, the people who will be blindsided are people like this. They don't know what they don't know about this stuff and you can tell the magic of LLMs has entranced these people enough that they can't be reasoned with. It's really hard to watch knowing full well how this ends...

Can we just skip to the part where these companies inevitably fail, burn up hundreds of billions, pull the West into a death spiral, and then we all rediscover the virtues of good soil hygiene?

That Trump will end up winning and based on the attacks that have been levied against him so far and his ability to circumvent them. That his potential for success, if this is taken to court, is a non-zero possibility. Deep down, there's a store of fear boiling that reflects the social shaming that will occur if that comes true. The over-the-top reactions and threats that people in their camp are raising (AOC and Jake Tapper are the more popular examples) are tremors of the mass, Jungian psychic death that could occur if it's realized that they were completely, entirely wrong. Drones programmed by the television lulled to sleep to prop up a world that takes complete and utter advantage of their existence.