You're conflating why people want to rewrite it in Rust vs what is the likely end result i.e. I do think people want to rewrite things in Rust because they believe long-term it will mean fewer (memory safety etc.) bugs especially because there's been almost no meaningful improvement in this space for a long time. But of course in the short term it will mean regressions compared to the established C written version.
That is different from AI where the calculus seems to be that if AI isn't involved, it aien't relevant.
> I do think people want to rewrite things in Rust because they believe long-term it will mean fewer (memory safety etc.) bugs
I don't believe that anymore - if that were true, the large portion of code now being rewritten in Rust wouldn't be vibe-coded slop.
I'd be more willing to believe that "quality" was the reason if those doing the rewrite weren't fucking vibing everything!