I don't deny that, under the right circumstances, these tools can produce results that feel indistinguishable from magic, or like science fiction as you put it. But I don't think it's worth the costs. To me, the two most concerning costs are the unreliability, and the massive amounts of stolen training data and underpaid labor (the RLHF process) required for these models. I'm not comfortable relying on a tool built on such foundations.

My bet, and I realize this might just be wishful thinking, is that the high order bit for being an effective software developer in the near future will be skill at using more reliable and non-exploitative automation tools, such as programming languages with powerful macro systems and other high-level abstractions, to stay competitive with developers who sling LLM-generated code. So I'd better get started developing that skill myself.