I'm not so sure I buy the premise that engineers are really dismissing AI because it's still not good enough. At the very least, this framing does not get to the heart of why certain engineers dislike AI.

Many of the people I've encountered who are most staunchly anti-AI are hobbyists. They enjoy programming in their spare time and they got into software as a career because of that. If AI can now adequately perform the enjoyable part of the job in 90% of cases, then what's left for them?