AI Has empowered people to build things much more quickly. Not slop if you are even a little conscientious about how you use it. What it does not do fix the human structural problems. If you are solving the wrong problems you aren’t doing anything useful. Just because you can now take an idea to near completion doesn’t mean it was worth doing, but now you spent tokens and a lot of your mental bandwidth to finish it. Or worse you let it become slop and it will fall apart if you even look at it funny.

Previously if I needed to automate something I thought really carefully about it. Now, I still think really carefully about it. I had fun AI coding some tools I always wanted but they were just pet projects for me. I had fun AI slop coding a couple of things, but it was not good software. But if you have a clear and valuable target? AI can absolutely get you there.

Multiply that across all your colleagues and a lot /seems/ to be happening, but what is actually moving the needle?