I've been behind the 8-ball at $dayjob, for reasons I don't have a say in, nor does anyone in my entire CoC. Vendors are delayed, we have hard shipping deadlines on our end.
Work pays for an expensive "AI" sub. I used it because I'm in a jam and deadlines are tight.
It worked. I'm a decent engineer/programmer. The tech saved me a month, at least. I think the money around all this tech is wrong and bad, but in a vacuum the tech works.
Best case, we are sitting in a tree, sawing off the very branch we're sitting on. Like we're having fun at a bar, never knowing when this particular one will close. While watching our friends, family, and everyone else out there lose their jobs, mentally we're all ready for that Friday 9 am "three person 1:1"
Ive also been deep in AI. Not only is AI inadequate for well engineered software, I think treating programming as a language translation task between spec and code boring. They're even worse for research, rabbit holes and bad lines of reasoning.
Im amazed people don't see how much smoke and mirrors even the frontier models and harnesses are using to mask the fact that they're reasonable sounding bullshit machines.