So instead of being creative and finding ways to avoid duplication, you look for a way to make copies faster.

That's one way to solve the problem.

Not the way I'm looking for when hiring.

    So instead of being creative and finding ways to avoid 
    duplication, you look for a way to make copies faster.

This has happened before.

When we went from assembler to compilers, this logic would have said, "So instead of being creative and finding ways to avoid hand-coding loops, you look for a way to spit out copies of loops faster." And the answer is, "Yeah, I do! I want the compiler to write the loop for me and get all the jumps right so I don't have to worry about it! Getting the jumps for the loop right is incidental to what I'm actually trying to write; I've got better things to spend my time on."

Note well: I am not arguing that AI will produce good code rather than multiple layers of garbage. I am merely saying that this particular argument is weak.