Will AI decrease demand and salaries?

[u/Proud-Confidence7290]

Hello everyone.

I am new to web development and it goes well so far.

I'm bit scared of AI development. Let's say you needed 10 developers for a project before ChatGPT and now you need 8.

With the development of AI, we will need even less.

Why do people think AI won't decrease demand and salaries of web developers? It's logic for me, what am I missing?

[u/BoyOnTheSun]

Would be debatable if what we currently call AI was actual artificial intelligence, but in reality it’s just a glorified chat bot that does google searches for you.

It is even debatable whether deep learning could even lead to creating actual AI or if it’s simply another dead end. So it’s technically just another tool to speed up development.

What usually happened when a new tool like that was introduced at any point in the entire human history? Did we ever reduce the number of people? Never. We just use the same amount of people to do more work faster and generate more value.

Why would it be different this time? Suddenly humanity forgets how economy works?

[u/dillanthumous → u/BoyOnTheSun]

Email was supposed to reduce waste.

Spreadsheets were supposed to improve efficiency and reduce errors.

Cars were supposed to make public transport quicker.

And in all cases humans said step aside and created junk mail, formula errors and traffic jams.

[u/poemehardbebe → u/dillanthumous]

Are you saying that if everyone stuck with horses transportation would be faster? Or sending documents via mail or fax? Our hands drawn spreadsheets???

[u/dillanthumous → u/poemehardbebe]

No.

I'm saying humans excel at finding ways to create new inefficiencies that result in even more work.

Emails created cybersecurity, Spreadsheets created pointless commercial projecting, Cars created vast road maintenance, licencing etc.

My point is we should not assume that just because a technology grants obvious advantages that it won't result in even more work than before.