Also worth noting, prompt engineering is only "difficult" now because the UI is effectively non existent, it's just a text box. This too will improve, and prompt engineering will get easier. It's imperative it becomes easier from the perspective of AI providers.
>That doesn't make it any less of a programming language
I don't see how you can believe that. Prompt engineering will never require learning an entirely new method of communication because the entire point is to communicate in languages you already know to create generations. Just because someone writes "image barn sunny trees" doesn't mean it's incomprehensible to those who know English, definitely not in the same way that "public static void main()" is incomprehensible to those who do understand English but not Java (or it's similar). You might think "well, prompt engineering can turn out the same way that Java example does", but that negates the entire functionality of AI and you're now just programming!
No, but it's not like every person in the world is a super competent communicator even in their own language. But I agree the number of competent natural language communicators is an order of magnitude larger than the number of competent programmers. So I do agree with minimaxir that supply will rapidly outstrip demand, and it's unlikely that "prompt engineering" (which is a ridiculously stupid title, btw, can we still change that?) will ever be more highly paid than "real" programming (or whatever is left of real programming, at least).
Still, my point is mostly that we should be weary of making proclamations like this because it's not easy to predict how this field will develop, especially when you consider aspects like domain-specific expertise (e.g. lawyers will be in a better position than programmers to "prompt engineer" a legal contract), and the simultaneous replacement of existing jobs with AI. These factors will blend together to create a mix of incentives that makes it difficult to predict the end result.
I don't think the Assembly/C/Python analogy is perfect, but it's not far off from the truth - we see a new technology ushering in a new wave of people proficient in it, and the temptation is to wave it away as unlikely to affect the status quo, but reality never ends up being so simple.
I also don't believe that domain-specific expertise is the big exception here you believe it to be, as domain specific expertise is not gatekept in any efficient form. This will result in people being able to utilize such expertise just through AI - after all, you don't need to be an expert chef to know what a julienne technique is, just ask AI.
> It's very easy to teach someone non-ML or even nontechnical how to do it given a few examples
Because a C programmer could have said the same thing about a Python job posting in 2004. Or an Assembly programmer could have said it about a job posting for a C programmer in 1975.
It's possible that prompt engineering will become the next higher level of abstraction above scripting languages, which means it will have its own ecosystem develop around it while introducing a new audience to the technical domain. That doesn't make it any less of a programming language, even if it appears that way now. Prompt engineering will have its own quirks and what makes a "good" prompt engineer may end up being somewhat distinct from what makes a "good" programmer. Maybe it will turn out that the best prompt engineers are the people most skilled with communicating precisely, which - to be fair - definitely includes programmers, but also opens the field to expert communicators from non-technical domains, like lawyers or editors.
All that said - paying anyone, non-technical or otherwise, $350k for talking to ChatGPT is obviously outrageous.