It's taking away programmers jobs today. I know of multiple small companies where hires were not made or contractors not engaged with simply due to the additional productivity gained by using Gen AI. This is for mundane "trivial" work that is needed to glue stuff together for the fields those small companies operate within.

It's like how "burger flippers" didn't go extinct due to automation. The burger joint simply mechanised and automated the parts that made sense, and now a lunch shift is handled by 5 employees instead of 20.

They will not replace the calibre of folks like Rob Pike in quite some time, perhaps (and I'd bet on) never.

I will grant you that the hype does not live up to the reality. The vast majority of jobs being taken from US developers are simply being offshored with AI as an excuse - but it is an actual real phenomenon I've personally witnessed.