>The bar for human juniors is now way higher than it used to be.
What do you think that is now? How does someone signal being 'past the bar'? If I hand wrote a toy gaussian splat renderer is that better than someone who used AI to implement a well optimized one with lots of features in vulkan?
'past the bar' means you have to be smarter than AI, simple as that. You need to be able to tell when it delivers good work, and when not. If you are not smarter than AI, you will not be able to tell the difference. And then what is your added value?
I perceive the AI itself as a very fast junior that I pair program with. So you basically need the seniority to be able to work with a "junior ai".
The bar for human juniors is now way higher than it used to be.