I can easily clear lots of low-priority engineering work quickly using AI. It takes a bit longer if I want to do a good job.

But here’s the rub: this is, basically by definition, low-priority engineering work. Those fixed papercuts are nice to have fixed but they do not necessarily add a lot of value.

And it’s all too easy to lose value by doing this. For example, current LLMs really really like adding test cases, and a lot of those test cases have basically no value, and carrying them around is not free.