Since my job now is primarily a reviewer of (AI) code I find:

1) I'm able to work on more projects

2) The things I am able to work on are much larger in scope and ambition

3) I like to mentally build the idea in my head so I have something to review the generated code against. Either to guide the model in the direction I am thinking or get surprised and learn about alternate approaches.

It's also like you say, in the process, a lot more iterative and ideation is able to happen with Ai. So early on i'll ask it for examples in x language using y approach. I'll sit on that for a night and throw around tangentially related approaches in my head and then riff on what I came up with the next day