> When people say they are worried AI will replace them as programmers, they mean that they think AI will fully produce error-free programs without the intervention of humans

Not really. It is sufficient that it makes most programmers orders of magnitude more productive. That will quickly restructure most teams across the industry, with most engineers dealing with AI pipelines end-to-end, which are as productive as an entire team. My current thinking is that the broad effect will amount to polarizing engineers into AI specialists and product specialists. It's still possible that the same amount of people are needed for this shift, but no doubt it will shake up the entire industry and force people to adapt. That said, I don't know how soon it will happen, but when it does it will probably happen relatively quickly.