The most interesting point here is the distinction between productivity and capability.

AI can absolutely make developers faster, but speed and skill don't always grow together. If every difficult debugging session gets outsourced to a tool, eventually you stop building the intuition that helps when production breaks, requirements change, or the AI suggestion is simply wrong.

The teams getting the most value from AI seem to use it as an accelerator, not a substitute for understanding. The real advantage isn't shipping more code today it's combining AI-driven velocity with the ability to explain, debug, and redesign the system when things get messy.

Productivity is visible in the sprint. Capability shows up when the unexpected happens. That's the part worth protecting.