> the developers churning out agent work on supergigaultramax effort are fulfilling the transitive preferences of people like supply chain managers, etc.

Sure, but that's the crux of it all, isn't it. Are they? And are they doing it that much better than before?

I'm far from an AI coding skeptic at this point, the stuff works, and I use it, but I think it's fair to ask whether it's worth burning a middle class home's amount of electricity to spit out CRUD apps and web frontends a bit faster. As many have pointed out, we've still yet to see some kind of huge productivity increase in society at large, or even some particularly revolutionary new app or whatever.

On some level it's people's money and they can spend it how they want, but people get criticized for unnecessary waste of resources all the time.