I can easily believe it.
Back when I worked for a living as a test-designer and builder, I’d joke with the project code leads that their best hires would be the laziest coders they could find. The coders who automated/scripted/whatever any process they’d be required to do more than two or three times.
If I was still designing/coding I’d be using some form of AI to generate the ground code. That was always the best way to get a project started - steal some code either from my own vast snippet library or from some generous chap online. If you weren’t a good code thief, I didn’t want you on my project. Of course, all the code I’m talking about was ‘in-house’, and never marketed. Back then, there were dozens of websites where good-hearted blokes shared generous chunks of working code - copy/paste/modify and move to next leg.
I use it.
I’ve been writing software for 57 years. I don’t need AI. I have a monstrous “toolbox” and I’ve very fast.
It’s great for saving 10 minutes here and there. Anything deep or more obscure like thread pools and Windows sockets for example can easily cost hours of debugging time. Better to ask it questions and write the code yourself in those situations.
take the AI crutch away and those ‘senior developers’ will be crippled.
writing code on a blank slate takes experience.
experience these ‘senior developers’ would be lucky to possess as they’ve been using AI for the last 2+ years.
Anyone can code, few can debug.