> You've declared the future, which doesn't leave much room for a conversation. So, cheers!

I just flipped your own rhetorical devices back on you. If you don't think they left much room for conversation, then that's a chance for you to look at yourself in the mirror and examine your own behavior ;)

To honestly answer your question in good faith, it's not about years, it's about results. I don't see AI improving exponentially or even linearly. I see it's capability gains logarithmically flattening out. And it's still a ways out from actually writing maintainable code.

I honestly don't believe we are going to reach this point you are saying is "a few years out" with the current architecture. We're throwing an obscene amount of resources at it and we're just not getting there.

And all of this is just about the practical "does it work?" question. We're not even touching on the ethical, environmental, resource use, or societal impact questions at work here.