I dislike it when rhetorical flourishes start with "honest question...".

Maybe using AI assistant instead of directly writing code is equivalent to using a high level language instead of assembly and maybe it isn't. So at least begin your discussion as "I think programmers who don't use AI are like programmers who insist on assembly rather than a high level language" (and they existed back in the day). I mean, an "honest question" is one where you are honestly unsure whether you will get an answer or what the answer will be. That's completely different from honestly feeling your opponents have no good arguments. Just about the opposite, really.

By the way, the reason I view AI assistants and high level language compilers as fundamentally different is that high level languages compilers are mostly deterministic, mostly you can determine both the code generated and the behavior of code in terms of the high level language. AI created/assisted code is fundamentally undermined relative to the source (a prompt) on a much wider basis than the assembly created by a high level language compiler (whose source is source code).

Edit: formatting