This is the case now - I can explain to the AI that I want to re-factor a component to support different implementations using a strategy pattern, and I can get a similar outcome to what I would have written, just implemented a bit faster. My expertise brings value.

But that's not what this specific article is describing. The world this article is describing is one where you describe the business requirements, and you don't think about how it's implemented. You don't write the code, you don't review the code, you don't test the code. You give the AI business requirements and you give it access to sources of context (slack, meeting notes, etc). Every place where the human would act as a gate reduces throughput, so it should be eliminated through building harnesses and providing context.

What they're doing here is the equivalent of taking a factory where you have 2 process engineers and 100 operators, and replacing all the operators with robots. They want to automate the whole process of making the software and just leave the part that figures out how to make the automation work effectively.

In this world, the average software company doesn't need people who know how to write good software, because writing, reviewing, maintaining, and testing the software will be entirely automated. There will be a small number of people at companies like OpenAI that need to know how to write good software in order to supervise training the models, and there will be a small number of people at the software companies who have expertise in setting up the automation.

How do you keep your skills if you no longer engage in the activity that keeps them sharp?