A friend of mine who has at most written some SQL joins recently bought a cheap thermal printer on Amazon. The printer was meant to be used with a heavily ad and microstransaction laden app to operate over Bluetooth. He was able to use codex to hook it up to his MacBook and reverse engineer the printer then make a web service so he can print whatever he wants from anywhere.
I agree with you in that I now feel like a 100x engineer, but I think it would have taken me a long time to figure that one out pre AI.
My experience with non-technical people using AI is not like this at all. Perhaps your friend is an outlier?
He's picked up the AI stuff really well. I've helped him along but he has an openclaw setup he uses for most things. Has gotten it to deploy sites to railway and fly.io. I am impressed for sure. I think he just has a lot of creativity and is excited about what he can do now so he's willing to learn.
GP's friend knows SQL joins, so I wouldn't lump her into the 'non-technical' group.
There's a lot of people who know Excel and SQL who otherwise don't know anything else technical. By my measure what they do is programming but a lot of people don't see it that way.
This is why I'm optimistic that we'll see a renaissance in hobby computing.
AI is the new BASIC.
At most written some SQL joins implies your friend is far more tech savvy than the average plumber