The Reason Why AI Won’t Be Taking Your Coding Job - Radical Politics
Close
Search for:
Search
Close
Skip to content
Open Search
Search for:
Search
Generated with artificial intelligence
Overview:
The CEOs of Silicon Valley promise that AI will eliminate programming jobs — but the history of technology suggests the opposite. Just as cheaper computers led to more computing, not less, AI-assisted coding is likely to lead to an increase of software demand that keeps programmers busy. The real threat to your job isn't the technology itself; it's a shareholder-driven economy that rewards companies for firing developers regardless of whether it makes technical sense. This article argues that we are heading not toward a world without programmers, but toward one where programmers do the work of ten people while their employers compete to see who can lay off the most — unless we choose a different path.
Introduction: The CEO Predictions
For the past several years, the chief executives of the largest artificial intelligence companies have been telling the world that white-collar jobs are on the verge of extinction. In July 2025, Ford CEO Jim Farley predicted that "artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S." (Ma, 2025). Similar pronouncements have come from the leaders of OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, each competing to paint the most dramatic vision of an AI-transformed economy.
So far, the technology sector itself has been the most visibly affected. According to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks publicly reported job cuts in the technology industry, more than 700,000 tech workers lost their jobs between 2023 and 2025. The 2023 peak saw approximately 429,608 layoffs across 1,193 companies, followed by 152,000 layoffs in 2024 and roughly 122,500 in 2025 (SQ Magazine, 2026). Research from Stanford Digital Economy Lab found that early-career software developers aged 22 to 25 experienced a nearly 20 percent decline in employment from its late 2022 peak by July 2025, suggesting that entry-level programming positions have been particularly affected (Stanford Digital Economy Lab, 2026).
This wave of layoffs has been especially concentrated among the large U.S. technology companies collectively known as FAANG (Meta/Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) plus Microsoft. Programming departments have borne a disproportionate share of these cuts. From the perspective of investors and shareholders, these layoffs serve as a signal: companies that reduce their engineering headcount are perceived as seriously committed to AI-driven efficiency, regardless of whether the technical reality supports such reductions.
This article argues that, paradoxically, both the CEOs and the investors are wrong about the underlying economics — even though their actions may still produce mass unemployment. The factor that analysts consistently overlook is that the demand for software is not fixed. Rather, it behaves like what economists call an elastic demand: when software becomes cheaper to produce, we find uses for vastly more of it. Understanding this dynamic requires examining both the history of computing and the present reality of how software demand actually works.
The Historical Parallel: Lessons from Computing History
The most frequently cited cautionary tale about underestimating technology is the apocryphal quotation attributed to IBM Chairman Thomas J. Watson Sr. in 1943: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." This quote appears in dozens of technology history books, in educational materials from PBS, and was on the Microsoft website at one point. It is regularly deployed in conference presentations and TED-style talks as evidence that even brilliant business leaders can spectacularly misjudge technological potential.
The problem is that Watson almost certainly never said it. IBM’s own historical documentation directly debunks the quotation. According to an IBM FAQ on company history, the statement appears to be "a misunderstanding of remarks made at IBM’s annual stockholders meeting on April 28, 1953" — a full decade later, and by Watson’s son, Thomas Watson Jr., not Watson Sr. (IBM Historical Archives, cited in GeekHistory, 2026). At that 1953 meeting, Watson Jr. was discussing the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, the company’s first production computer designed for scientific calculations. He told stockholders that IBM had developed a paper plan for the machine and pitched it to approximately twenty potential customers. The machine rented for between $12,000 and $18,000 per month — an enormous sum at the time. Watson Jr. reported: "As a result of our trip, on which we expected to get orders for five machines, we came home with orders for 18."
The mangled version — "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" — appears to have emerged sometime after 1981, with no attested primary source from 1943 or any other year...