This is always my thought whenever I hear the "AI let me build a feature in a codebase I didn't know in a language I didn't know" (which is often, there is at one in these comments). Great, but what have you learned? This is fine for small contributions, I guess, but I don't hear a lot of stories of long-term maintenance. Unpopular opinion, though, I know.

I guess it's a question of how anyone learns. There's some value in typing code, I suppose, but with tab complete that's been gone for a long time. Letting AI write something and then reading it seems as good as copying and pasting from some other source.

I'm not super qualified to answer as I haven't gone deep into AI at all. But from my limited observations I'd say yes and no. You generally aren't copy/pasting entire features, just snippets that you yourself have to string together in a sensible way. Of course there are lots of people who still do this and what's why I find most people in this industry infuriating to work with. It's all good when it's boilerplate, and that's actually my primary use of "AI"—it's essentially been a snippets replacement (and is quite good at that).