Very good summary of the situation. About the only thing you didn't highlight is that the AI we have now just isn't up to most of the jobs it's already being used for, although it's implied every time you mention the need for humans to check the AIs work. When there's no longer any need for human oversight, then we might start to look at the possibility of software entirely replacing humans in certain roles but we still seem to be a long way from that, despite what companies making the huge investments in the technology would like us to believe.

Also, if we could all just call it "software" or "apps" instead of glorifying it with the wholly unmerited "AI" label, the hype would melt away. I'm pretty sure we'll all have to make some very major re-adjustments when and if any actual AIs turn up but the handy shortcuts and labor-saving devices we're all getting so excited about now certainly aren't it.
 

The trouble with complaining about the "AI" moniker is that lots of things it does are things that we would have had no hesitation calling "intelligent" before machines started to do them...
 

It certainly is impacting my industry. Nowhere can I escape the pressure to automate as much as possible to reduce head count. While automation has always been a pressure, it significantly accelerated as AI became more capable. I find myself at an interesting point near the end of my career - be part of the group that uses AI to automate and reduce the number of people that we need and therefore available jobs, or be part of the group that gets affected by the first group. I am actively trying to incorporate AI into what I do to increase productivity. I don't know where this is going in the long-term, but it sure hasn't been fun going through this.
 

It seems to me that the top market for AI is not job replacement, but will instead be its use as a quick and dirty tool for content creators to no longer have to film themselves for ticktok or streaming content. For these sorts of content creators this will let them replace their live selves with digitized VEO 3 avatars doing stuff without them having to actually leave the house. The secondary problem lies with AI being used as a tool to aid in writing and illustration in markets such as RPGs, where creatives such as artists are being annihilated overnight as the need for human-drawn content that costs money is replaced by creators looking to generate sufficiently quality images to go with their written text (and who knows how much of the text is also AI generated or assisted?) Put another way: AI is a great tool (my programming team at work is using AI tools to aid them in coding right now, for example), but its also going to have a profound impact in the coming years on human creative works. I can already see the market devastating the value of human generated works as the cheap and easy near-future solution to everything from tiktok to television (and pretty much all digital content) hits us like a wave of endless slop. There will probably end up being a cottage industry of "made by a real human" products that swells out of this, but its going to be a niche thing, like how records have made a comeback among some music fans; the rest will happily enjoy their AI-generated entertainment.

Also, I wouldn't want to be in the television streaming industry right now. I think at least in the short term its going to suck as Netflix and others realize you can replace every step of the production chain for a film with prompts, and we're maybe a year or two away from products like VEO 3 putting the entire industry out of business (at least in the short term). Maybe hand-curated "this TV show was made with no AI and real actors" content will also get its own cottage industry soon.
 

I'm a SQL developer. I use Co-pilot for a number of things on a day to day basis. I'm not worried about AI taking my job for many of the same reasons you touched on. Even if dubious claims by some companies are true where AI is creating up to 30% of their code the technology is still very far away from replacing humans entirely.

For coding AI is really good at basic tasks and regurgitating popular frameworks and layouts at you. The minute you have to do anything complex or non-standard, especially when its tied to existing databases or code, it craps out.

I use it essentially like a better version of Google or stack overflow and for that its really good.