I don't think it was ever ignored that knowledge workers would be the first affected by AI. I remember hearing for a long time that lawyers, doctors, accountant

I don't think it was ever ignored that knowledge workers would be the first affected by AI. I remember hearing for a long time that lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. would all be obsoleted by AI. I do think many (including me) were surprised that software engineering would be the first kind of knowledge work to be successfully automated. We assumed it would be one of the last, because we'd be the industry using AI to replace everyone else, not the industry using AI to replace ourselves.