You really don't know any serious engineers using AI for real projects? Donald Knuth himself has written about his success using AI to solve long standing problems he has been interested in. I dont know if there is anyone more deserving of the "serious engineer" label than him.

I personally know of very serious AI projects running at some of the biggest, most successful tech companies in the world. These aren't "another version of a web concept", they are serious projects solving serious problems.

There are all sorts of valid criticisms about AI, but you aren't making them.

it's fascinating that you imagine that building features for web applications is never "real work".

It is real work, just 90% of it is either net negative for society or provides nuetral value. Most web applications that are piling on features now because they have agents, are piling on features that we never needed in the first place, hence why they weren't prioritized previously. Junk junk junk.

> I like thinking, solving problems and typing out code myself.

I get this, I totally do, and I kind of hate relegating myself to doing "project manager" work instead of "software engineer" work, but the productivity gains make it no contest on whether to use AI here. Once I comprehensively validate the spec for a new feature, Codex just one-shots it basically every time. I'm talking thousands of lines of code in a single 3-hour session, with much of my time being spent browsing the internet while I wait for Codex to run in 15-20 minute sessions.

I'd estimate at least a 20x speedup in my ability to ship.

(and before you say it, yes, I review every single line of code before merging anything, so no - it's not AI slop)