This is how cars are manufactured today.
In software the replication cost is zero unlike hardware where you need thousands of people to assemble parts. Software is a discovery driven field unlike an assembly line, although managers insist on the assembly line. It seems with the release of Github Co-pilot we have entered a similar era in programming. Will retro programming be a thing in the future like retro car building ?
Assuming a robot can replace 10 people cost-effectively it will add 4 new jobs while taking away 10 jobs. The new 4 jobs would be
1. Supervising the robot
2. Hardware Maintenance / Repair
3. Programming
4. Data maintenance, AI maintenance
The jobs like marketing, management, accounting … will be similar to the jobs held in the previous technology. The training cost for teaching people familiar with the old technology, the new cool thing will be significant not to mention the environmental cost. Aesthetically speaking old technology has a charm but new technology is just too cheaper to ignore. Case in point, AWS with its dynamic IP address effectively replaced the hardware load balancer and created a new dev ops field as a result.