This resonates with me. I'm also around the same age and have the same amount of experience.

I love AI and use it for both personal and work tasks for two reasons:

1. It's a way to bounce around ideas without (as much) bias as a human. This is indispensable because it gives you a fast feedback mechanism and validates a path.

2. It saves me typing and time. I give it one-shot, "basic work" to do and it's able to do accomplish at least 80% of what I'd say is complete. Although it may not be 100% it's still a net positive given the amount of time it saves me.

It's not lost on me that I'm effectively being trained to always add guardrails, be very specific about the instructions, and always check the work of AI.