I believe my job as a programmer is to produce value, but your retort is very strong. Cleaning bathrooms would not be fullfilling for me.

Ultimately, I like the creation part of programming: creating something that doesn't exist that is of value to at least one person (usually me). In general, though, I get more satisfaction when more people get value out of my creations.

Through that lens, AI does change things: a whole set of things that I can create no longer have value to people (at least the value is lower, because AI can do it better than whatever product I create). But at the same time, I can now create more sophisticated and more powerful things with the help of AI.

On the whole, I'm more satisfied with AI than without.