Cognition Labs launched Devin, which they are calling the first AI software engineer, and the discourse has been predictably apocalyptic. Coders are worried about their jobs. Tech Twitter is split between hype and skepticism. And I am over here thinking about what happens when the people building the tools become obsolete before the people the tools were supposed to replace.
The expected automation path got flipped.
The conventional wisdom was: AI replaces routine cognitive work first, creative work last. Factory floors, then spreadsheets, then customer service, then maybe, eventually, the sacred creative class. We were supposed to be safe. The artists, the writers, the strategists, the thinkers.
Instead, AI came for creative work first (writing, art, video) and is now coming for engineering. Meanwhile, the plumber, the electrician, and the person who fixes your dishwasher remain completely irreplaceable because physical dexterity in unstructured environments is still impossibly hard for robots.
This is the funniest plot twist in the history of labor economics. The people who built AI to replace blue-collar work accidentally made a tool that threatens white-collar work first.
What this means for brand strategy specifically:
If Devin-style AI engineers become even moderately reliable, the cost of building digital products drops dramatically. That means:
More brands will be able to build custom digital experiences. The technical barrier to entry for digital innovation drops. The differentiator shifts from "can we build this?" to "should we build this?"
And "should we build this?" is a strategy question, not an engineering question.
The value chain is inverting. When execution was expensive, strategy existed to make sure you executed the right thing and did not waste budget. When execution becomes cheap, strategy exists to make sure you do not drown in options and build things nobody needs just because you can.
When execution becomes cheap, strategy exists to make sure you do not drown in options and build things nobody needs just because you can.
Taste becomes the bottleneck.
I keep coming back to this. In a world where AI can write, design, code, and produce video, the scarcest resource is judgment. Knowing what to build. Knowing what will resonate. Understanding humans well enough to predict what they need before they articulate it.
That is strategy. That is cultural fluency. That is the human skill of sitting in ambiguity and making decisions based on pattern recognition, empathy, and taste. No model does this yet, and I am skeptical one will anytime soon.
The career advice nobody wants to hear:
If your value proposition is execution speed or execution quality, invest now in developing judgment, perspective, and strategic thinking. The execution floor is rising. What used to require a team of ten will soon require a team of three with AI tools. The people who survive that compression will be the ones making the decisions, not the ones carrying them out.
This is not doom. This is evolution. And evolution favors the adaptable, not the efficient.