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> If we can build up an immense library of clearly defined problems and solutions, with variants which fit with all conceivable unique contexts, then maybe it will become possible for AI to provide useful assistance.

Agreed. What you're describing (an immense library of problems and solutions) is essentially what's in the head of a very experienced developer. A system that helped surface those in a simple way for "new" problems so that people aren't constantly reinventing the wheel and making the same mistakes would be great. I've seen ideas about similar "tacit knowledge" systems in other domains (though I'm not sure there is a good one yet). For software, such a system would be way more helpful, and a much better goal, than this kind of idiot-savant gpt stuff

Programming is 10-20% of the job, sure it's fundamental but even if an AI could generate optimal code solutions for most use cases it'd still never replace us...

...probably.

The interesting bit will be when the AI is smart enough to take an “easy” language like Typescript and convert it to rust or c++

It still won't help with setting up the development environment to be able to compile rust of the week or c++??. Both of which have dev communities which adopt forwards incompatible features fairly rapidly so the environment in your distro probably won't work as is. But eventually, maybe they AI will set that up too, https://www.commitstrip.com/en/2019/03/15/css-css-everywhere...

So what we need is an AI that completely understands the problem space and can tell us what to code.