The problem with this assertion is cost. You say that if tokens cost a lot of money, you will _have_ to reduce team size. This is a questionable premise and a trap that companies are falling into.

I don't have hard data on it, but if someone is spending $1.5k a month on Claude (the limit of some folks I know) that shakes out to $18k a year. In my experience, I'd MUCH rather use the $18k of a few developer's Claude budget to hire another dev instead of trying to get a robot to do stuff.

AI is useful, but it's can't f*cking learn like a human can and improve at something.

And, honestly, if your job can be replaced by AI, then your job was more susceptible to offshoring/layoffs/any other for m of cost cutting already.