AI coding is booming, so why can't we see the new, good software?
Where is all the new, good software?
AI skeptics ask: if AI coding is so great, where is all the new, good software? Nate Meyvis offers nine conjectural answers. We may be seeing fewer bugs and better features, but much improvement is hidden: political bottlenecks slow adoption, AI replaces durable software with ephemeral use, private tools stay invisible, and teams may choose more leisure over more output. Some answers are speculative, but they challenge the assumption that AI should visibly transform software overnight.
AI is replacing broadly available software with private software. Domain experts are building their own tools; executives are making their own dashboards; companies have bespoke internal projects. So the software is out there, just not visible to the rest of us, and especially not visible to skeptics.