They are not the same level, but that may be fine. As for productivity, I don't take that as a given. Maybe in a few years we'll be at the point where AI is better than AI + human, but we aren't there yet. The other models may be faster are pumping out code, but if you're building in the wrong direction more code is more bad.

> us as programmers are supposed to be creators/makers, not mere consumers/users

But that's a false dichotomy. As a programmer I am very much a consumer of the language I use, the IDE, the compiler, and of most of my dependencies. (to say nothing of the OS and the hardware).

I, and I'd wager most people around here, haven't and are aren't individually building at all layers of that stack at once.