> You must understand what your AI generated code does

Absolutely yes.

> You must be able to do your job if your AI tooling disappears

Absolutely not.

Look, I'm an alright programmer. Not good, far from great. Interpreted languages work for me; add all that strong typing and compilation and it starts to go beyond what I'm interested in. Nonetheless, pre-AI, I have shipped many very functional, production-grade applications for many companies.

Now, I can write stuff in Go, and Rust, and it's fantastic. So much faster. The AI likes the strong typing, the test-ability, predictability, it all makes total sense. I'm using this stuff all the time, but I have not learned any Go; I'm too busy focusing on the parts the AI cannot do for me, like real requirements gathering, architecture, fit and finish, engaging stakeholders, etc. that still require the human touch. Maybe I could have learned some Go using that time, but at the end of the day my employer is paying me for results, not for my edification!

There are now huge parts of my job I cannot do without AI. Sure, it's like 800-1200 bucks a month of extra cost; ok; but with that extra low-5-figs a year of cost I am a much better employee in terms of my capabilities. It's easily delivering ROI for me, and therefore for my employer. Instead of sitting around wishing I had a Go developer to ask for help implementing a simple feature in a Terraform provider, I can just fork it and add what I need, try to submit it upstream for inclusion, etc. and the lack of language specific skills is no longer holding me back.

Take away the tool and I can't do that part of the job anymore, sorry. I can still do a lot, but slower, and honestly it would feel like going from a car back to walking, now; walking's fun, I do it recreationally for the sheer joy, but when there's hundreds of kilometres to cover in a short amount of time, the car is clearly the correct choice. So too is it with AI: we've invented the car for computers and only a fool would pretend he can do everything the same without it now.

If you can't do the job without AI, you can't do the job.

Spoiler alert: if you can't do the job, you're not going to be doing the job much longer.

A better analogy would be "the trebuchet for computers".

"but when there's hundreds of kilometres to cover in a short amount of time, the trebuchet is clearly the correct choice."

you point it in the rough direction and distance you want to go, pull the lever, see if you hit your mark, adjust, pull the lever again, etc.

And once you have dialed in the variables for that particular piece of rock that one time, you write it down in a "skill.md" file and announce to everyone on the team "this trebuchet has been carefully calibrated. Trust it with your other rocks too."

> only a fool would pretend he can do everything the same without it now

Unless you're working in a coding sweatshop, I don't see why you need AI to do what people have been doing for decades just fine without breaking a sweat.

What are you working on?

I can do everything the same without it, because I'm still not using it. Why would I want to be a guinea pig for the world's richest companies and also atrophy my brain.