AI is an average coder.

It was trained on all code the code that could be found.

Not just code written by genius programmers like Carmack and Bellard.

Given that it's average, I'd prefer a human coder above average :)

LLMs learn a distribution during pre-training, not only an average.

Then, by giving them context or by post-training, you can make them sample non-average parts of the distribution they learned.

I dont think Opus 4.8 is an average coder, with my own experience (I have coded 20 + years before even llms existed) it is anything but average. I don't think training data alone determines the success of these models, there are lots of reinforncement learning principles and fine tuning takes place, a crappy code in the dataset doesnt hold those llms scoring high in benchmarks, I dont think an average programmer can score 70% (opus 4.8) in SWE Bench Pro, which is a good one.

Which you will necessarily have if they’ve completed a Rust rewrite.

You haven't been using AI extensively I presume...

I've been programming a long time and considered myself among the top in my domain and AI agents using like GPT 5.5 etc. are much better than me.