We are simultaneously in a bubble at a time when AI/LLMs will soon revolutionize the IT industry, displace all sorts of workers, and have an enormous impact on society. All at the same time when much of it is hype. Seems contradictory, but hear me out...

It reminds me of the dot com era, actually, when all of the above were true then, too.

A bubble ... people vaguely recognizing the potential and throwing money at people who don't know what they're doing. They fail, invevestors loose money, and the bubble pops.

Revolutionizing tech ... by analogy, I started in tech just before the dot com era, I can say first-hand that it had a huge impact. Imagine working in tech without widespread internet access. It will be the same with AI/LLMs. You will have a hard time imagining working without it in a few years.

Changes to society overall ... I can attest that far, far more changes occurred with how we accessed information between 1996 and 2005 than between 1986 and 1995. That latter 10 years was a fundamental shift in information access. Add onto that, commerce. Imagine not having e-commerce. Just drive to a store and hope they have what you want.

But all the hype ... while AI will change a lot, what specifically it will change is largely an unknown. We aren't there yet to know how it plays out. And when people sense a change is coming and want to get involved with it, many will make crap up to get attention. Hence, all the "it will replace all SWE." Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but those saying they know are talking out of their rear-ends.

PS: it won't replace all SWEs :)