Heard a quote I liked today.

“In order to be effective working at any layer of abstraction you must have in-depth knowledge of the layer below where you’re at”.

To be the most effective at AI assisted engineering (if treated as an abstraction layer) you need to understand how code works, behaves, architectures etc. and what well performing, well built things look like. Doesn’t necessarily mean you have to know everything like you would pre-AI, but enough to be effective.

Exactly, automation of manual tasks, doesn't mean it will wipe your knowledge or your ability to keep reviewing commits, writing comments on PRs, etc.