This is not true at least with the current crop of AI.
I have seen 4-5 people use the tools (won’t say where and in what capacity, but only one of them was an employee of mine) and the results were wildly different.
One person just copy pasted AI responses and added no value. But that meant they also copy pasted substandard responses and it actually reduced the quality of their work (in fact, their greatest asset was client management)
Another one was a coder, and even though he was using windsurf every day, he was getting stuck on the most basic items. And having access to AI made no difference in his productivity because he doesn’t have the base knowledge and experience to be able to discern what is a quality suggestion and what isn’t. And he doesn’t know what questions to even ask the AI to help unblock him.
I actually think these tools will WIDEN the gap between what a good engineer can do, and what a mediocre one can. And it will widen income gaps. I’m not going to say this is a good thing. I’m still a human being.
For example, with regard to students, it was the mediocre, lazy students who started using ChatGPT to cheat. The good students didn't need it. And as I said, the cheaters are no better off than before. They mistakenly thought they had some completitive advantage, but the same tools were available to everyone.
With regard to engineers, the issue isn't the difference between good engineeres and mediocre engineers. The issue is that all good engineers have access to the same AI. Thus, engineers who were equal to each other before AI are still equal to each other. It's not a competitive advantage over peers, and thus there's no incentive to pay them more. AI doesn't change the supply of good engineers, nor does it give individual good engineers a competitive advantage over other good engineers. Any additional productivity comes more or less for free, because it's due to factors external to the engineer rather than internal to the engineer.
I have seen 4-5 people use the tools (won’t say where and in what capacity, but only one of them was an employee of mine) and the results were wildly different.
One person just copy pasted AI responses and added no value. But that meant they also copy pasted substandard responses and it actually reduced the quality of their work (in fact, their greatest asset was client management)
Another one was a coder, and even though he was using windsurf every day, he was getting stuck on the most basic items. And having access to AI made no difference in his productivity because he doesn’t have the base knowledge and experience to be able to discern what is a quality suggestion and what isn’t. And he doesn’t know what questions to even ask the AI to help unblock him.
I actually think these tools will WIDEN the gap between what a good engineer can do, and what a mediocre one can. And it will widen income gaps. I’m not going to say this is a good thing. I’m still a human being.
But I’m just reporting what I’ve observed.