I like that you start by saying that you don’t know how someone could draw that conclusion about AI and end by saying they probably got there by using AI
While that's true and pretty funny, it does make for a meaningful distinction IMO: Just like you wouldn't look at the "all Ds" student, but not the "straight A" student in order to get an impression of students' capabilities, you wouldn't ignore a newer, potentially SOTA-pushing model to then come out and say something along the lines of "all models suck"… right?
The competence threshold can vary according to the model's complexity and cost to run, but the broader point remains that having a human operator of greater competence that can evaluate the output and understand potential harms that might result seems to be a valid one. Depending on domain, it can be irresponsible to deploy systems you don't fully understand that could harm others. Responsibly overseeing 37k lines of code a day sounds exhausting.