I can answer question #1 from the perspective of an employee who trades time for money: I don’t get immense joy [1] from writing code to do whatever dumb corporate thing my employer needs this week.

An agentic workflow lets me literally sit on my hands (or play Star Wars: Galactic Racer, or play my musical instrument, or work on my CAD hobby, etc) while the agent machine does my work for me.

The best part is that this is how my employer wants me to work. They literally want me to be lazy. Works for me!

Where is my incentive structure to not use AI?

[1] coding manually brings me a non-zero amount of joy and mental satisfaction and stimulation but I am still trading time for money.

How long it will it take your employer to figure out that your hours are really only worth a fraction of your current rate?

You're not being paid to be busy, you're paid to be useful. A man with a tea spoon digging a ditch is worth a lot less than one with a excavator.

Yes, but if I only use the excavator for 5 minutes and coast the remaining 55 minutes, I'm less useful than someone who uses the excavator the whole hour. Now, if I'm particularly skilled at using the excavator than my peers, I might be able to work less. If not, working 5 minutes while charging for 60 minutes will eventually get me fired.

Generally, automation does not make us work less because the expectations rise equivalently.

The work is redefined to be something rather different and easier. If you disagree try digging a trench with a shovel vs an excavator.

I think you completely missed the point. If the work becomes faster, you need to get more work done per hour than before. The work has been redefined, but so have the expectations.

1. At my company I am basically a regulatory requirement.

2. I’m paid to be a warm body who is available. That’s I am paid salaried instead of hourly.

3. I don’t really care if this situation changes in the future. If AI takes my job there’s nothing I can personally do to stop that from happening. I’m just saving my money and planning to retire as early as possible. I view work as a necessary evil.

Seems like you make best out of it :)

Good software comes from good ideas, design, and a deep understanding of why it does things. A better model will not give you much of that. So to answer that 1) do you want it now, or in six months? and 2) it will still take the same amount of human effort.

"What incentive do you have in vibing up something?" I can use it.