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My (admittedly totally non-rigorous) intuition is that the advances in AI might "grow the pot" of the software engineering, IT, and related industries at roughly the same rate that they can "replace professionals" in those industries. If that's the case, then there wouldn't be some existential threat to the industry. Of course, that doesn't mean that certain individuals and entire companies aren't at risk, and I don't want to minimize the potential hardship, but it doesn't seem like a unique or new problem.

As a crude analogy, there are a lot of great free or low-cost tools to create websites that didn't exist 15 years ago and can easily replace what would be a much more expensive web developer contract 15 years ago. And yet, in those last 15 years, the "size of the web pot" has increased enough that I don't think many professional web developers are worried about site builder tools threatening the entire industry. There seem to be a lot more web developers now then there were 15 years ago, and they seem to be paid as well or better than they were 15 years. And again, that doesn't mean that certain individuals or firms didn't on occasion experience financial hardship due to pressure from cheaper alternatives, and I don't want to minimize that. It just seems like the industry is still thriving.

To be clear, I really have no idea if this will turn out to be true. I also have no idea if this same thing might happen in other fields like art, music, writing, etc.