People online with identical views to them all assure me that theyre all highly skilled though.
Meanwhile I've been experimenting using AI for shopping and all of them so far are horrendous. Cant handle basic queries without tripping over themselves.
But you can understand why all the 1700 and below chess players say it is good and it is making them better using it for eval?
Don't worry, AI will replace you one day, you are just smarter than most of us so you don't see it yet.
This kind of thinking is actually a big reason why execs are being misinformed into overestimating LLM abilities.
LLM coding agents alone are not good enough to replace any single developer. They only make a developer x% faster. That dev who is now x% faster may then allow you to lay off another dev. That is a subtle yet critical difference.
To adress your point, let's try another one analogy. Imagine secreterial assistants, discussing their risk of been replaced by computers in the 80s. They would think: someone still need to type those letters, sit next to that phone and make those appointments, I am safe. Computers won't replace me.
It is not that AI will do all of your tasks and replace you. It is that your role as a specialist in software development won't be necessary most of the time (someone will do that, and that person won't call themselves a programmer).
For me the main difference is now some people can explain what their code does. While some other only what it wants to achieve
This is an interesting choice for a first experiment. I wouldn't personally base AI's utility for all other things on its utility for shopping.
Most people dont really understand coding but shopping is a far simpler task and so it's easier to see how and where it fails (i.e. with even mildly complex instructions).