If they don't agree to be turned into a cyborg, are they really using enough AI?

If these interns think a bit they both should run away by end of week six.

This is the hiring process...

I don't understand the question, they are interns

Hunger games style I like it

The creamé settles to the top

TL;DR: Code is the easy part; and at least in the last few years was rarely the bottleneck so even if we get rid of coding we don't deliver infinity amount of software. The "What to build" usually takes longer than building it. The amount will only go up where coding was holding things up or the main portion of time spent in delivering software (Hint: It usually isn't even 20% of the time in delivery times in my experience). There's many other stages to the SDLC and lots of processes even before then for large scale systems.

On your point about a consultancy; many of the software dev consultancies will dry up w.r.t work. There won't be success as you state -> after all if your consultancy can do it so can an LLM so why do I need you as the middleman? After all just get Claude/Gemini/etc to do it for small things; you are already seeing this effect in things like graphic design, copywriting and other small creative skills. For large things with large complexity and judgement you need domain experts and guardrails again and other non-coding jobs -> that slows things down considerably so but still better to be in those jobs than anything requiring intelligence now.

As a result coding could easily be automated entirely and we may only see for example 20% increase in total "large" software velocity. As I mentioned in another comment it will be the people in the chain who produce little value but are required for other reasons (e.g. compliance, due diligence, sales, consultants, etc) that will remain and will be the bottleneck. The people that techies thought offered little value and made up inefficiencies and didn't contribute at all -> they have the last laugh in the end and they have AI to thank for that.

Personally in my team I know we are seeing significant improvement to the point where hiring is no longer considered; I'm worried about our senior staff even. Anything that is labor, and not deciding "what to do" I feel I no longer need help with nearly as much. This is many components in a large public org. Feel like I only need two staff now, and that's more to understand the problem and what to do then the action of actually doing it; and a backup for accountability. If I hire more its only because we I can't keep up with the AI and am burning out, and I won't because I don't want to "hire to fire" later on if we run out of product work. It makes me anxious, and I can't recommend anyone with honesty to make this their career anymore; anything else feels more like false hope at this point.