Thing is, the unreliable-software situation was already untenable before agents (in poor hands) made it worse.

Yes but that's the big thing, now isn't it? These are nice tools, used wisely. But their unwise use, oh boy...

The problem is one needs to be in a situation where the incentive is towards quality rather than speed. But that situation rather rare now - thirty years ago, Microsoft won the office wars with crap that had features. And nothing has fundamentally changed in web development since the LPad crisis.

The problem is those companies whose incentive is to allow bugs where it's the involuntary users who suffer will bite you no matter what quality you make your own software.