"how do you use an ax in the age of AI"

Exactly the same as I used it on the age of frameworks, the age of Java and .NET, the age of compilers, the age of ...: you take it by the helve and swing the business end towards the object.

It is more like using skill saw in the age of IKEA.

When you use AI you are not programming, you are having a statistical machine deliver you inferred code which it got by stealing it from everybody else.

This is your carpenter going to IKEA and fitting a cheap furniture slop made by exploited workers in poorer countries, with cheap wood grown on stolen indigenous lands, into your kitchen, when you were expecting custom fit cabinets.