With so much business conducted via a cellphone or Internet-connected devices in general, there is a strong incentive to interact directly and quickly with potential customers. For web developers to support virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Cortana, there is a strong emphasis on learning voice-activated technologies using AI as the core.

Voice-activated commands are the most direct and quickest way to interact with a person on the move, someone needing to save time and get the job done and move on. Maybe the person is mobile and needs an answer quickly or is ordering an Uber ride and the interaction is brief and abbreviated. Maybe there is no need for a fast answer, say a desktop inquiry, but many of these questions are rather complex or require an extensive data search so AI will still need to be part of the query search.

So beyond just designing an effective and well-presented website, the programming technologies to learn have been ramped up. AI programming is complex and extensive. Data searching in the Cloud is difficult and requires a team effort. Speech recognition has become entwinded with AI and Cloud searching is glued to huge server database platforms and their implied services. I would say that web development has become an automation threat to young developers and this drives the need to get involved with larger enterprizes to stay in the game.

Just as it is rather difficut to form your own professional sports team, you need to be part of a league. The game is worldwide and the levels of expertise in play have expanded way beyond just being a Next/React programmer with savvy Javascript skills. Web-dev has become multi-leveled. Now broader experience levels will be the norm, which implies getting into a group that has a plan to move as a team up into the big leagues that bring these technologies to the world.