AI is unlikely to disappear, regardless of whether the current AI investment boom eventually proves to be a bubble. The author sees the race toward AGI as a major reason companies continue investing heavily in AI. While the arrival of AGI remains uncertain, today's large language models are already changing how people work, with software development emerging as one of the areas most likely to be transformed. AI-generated code is still imperfect and requires human judgment, but the direction of change is clear: software is becoming faster and cheaper to produce.
As AI improves, the author expects software production to become increasingly connected to AI inference and token generation. Human developers will still need to understand customer requirements, design architecture, operate systems, maintain security, and make important decisions, but an increasing share of implementation work could be generated by machines. This could dramatically increase the amount of software produced while making the economics of software development increasingly dependent on models, computing infrastructure, and the cost of AI inference.
This creates an important strategic problem for software companies. If AI makes it possible to reproduce software much faster, simply having a large codebase or having spent years developing a product may no longer provide the same competitive protection. Companies will need to identify what remains difficult to copy, such as proprietary data, customer relationships, industry expertise, distribution, trust, integrations, and operational knowledge. The article also raises concerns about relying heavily on external AI providers, since development prompts can potentially reveal information about a company's architecture, business logic, customer requirements, and product ideas.
Ultimately, the author believes the most important question is not whether AI will replace software developers, but what happens when software itself becomes abundant. If powerful AI becomes widely available, the ability to write code may no longer be the main competitive advantage. Companies therefore need to ask what they own that will remain scarce and valuable when producing software becomes dramatically easier. Even without AGI, this shift could fundamentally change the software industry—and for some companies, determining their new competitive advantage may become a matter of survival.
