I see many people comparing the production of code through AI with compilers: just another layer of abstraction. They argue that, in the same way that creating high-level languages that were compiled to assembler meant that most people didn't need to know assembler any more, then specifying specs and letting AI produce the high-level language will mean that most people won't need to know the high-level language any more.

However, there is a fundamental flaw in this analogy: compilers are deterministic, AI is not. You get high-level code and compile it twice, you get exactly the same output. You get specs and generate high-level code through AI twice, you get two different outputs (hopefully with equivalent behaviour).

If you don't understand that deterministic vs. non-deterministic is a fundamental and potentially dangerous change in the way we produce work, then you definitely fail at first principles.