It seems like the only people who actually derive value out of it are software developers or middle managers. Every other professional discipline has liability and a need to verify accuracy before actioning something. So beyond reading the AI generated summary on a search engine for non critical things it's basically useless.

At absolute worst, bare minimum, these tools function as incredibly fast fuzzy intent based searchers on documentation

Instead of spending 10 minutes on "where the hell is (documentation) Im trying to find" these tools can hunt them down for me in a matter of seconds.

That already makes them useful just for that, let alone all the other crazy shit they help with now.

I'm glad I don't work where you do. Unfortunately though, I've heard plenty of stories from industry colleagues who have been forced to use AI coding assistants, regardless of any actual impact on productivity or reliability. The consequences of this approach are already manifesting in the form of an embarassing new era of security vulnerabilities. Preaching about the widespread usage of AI is misleading at best if the adoption is mostly based on external marketing pressure. We've had this before with other technologies that get pushed hard by sales people.

I appreciate your comment, even when many others downvote it. Honest experiences like this provide context and should always be upvoted in my eyes.

You didn't even make any claims about effectiveness or usefulness. Downvotes like these make me sad and make me feel like this is an unwelcoming community in general, where you can't have open and honest discussions.