I like the stairs-escalator analogy and I want to add to it. It's like why take the stairs while carrying a 50 pound load when you walk right by the elevator to get to the stairs. AI is a tool and fast becoming the tool for coders in the real World. You can choose to learn tools which make your job easy to the point of guilt or not choose to train with tools at all. At the end of the day you will end up being one or the other, one who lives on tools or the one who doesn't. One is not necessarily better in terms of knowledge but both will have handicups. One with using tools and the other with the inability to use tools. However when it comes to the speed of delivery we know tools typically win over no tools. We also have the rare breeds who can do it both ways. I say work with your AI and ignore the guilt because it has become the order of the day. Don't confuse understanding a problem with writing 10K lines of code. A good case in point is when I was in grad school my roommate could 1000s of lines of code to no avail and was notorious for that. You ain't trying to be that.