OP here: I thought it might be interesting to document how I (a random engineer) have been using AI day-to-day. I tried to ground everything with real examples, so you can judge for yourself :)

You do use AI! And I do too, I started my work with AI about 2 years after you did, and the experience and opinions I have match yours to a T. However, I have tried AI to do things from scratch multiple times, and the fact still remains that you have to gently nudge it like you would a junior dev. This is not a new discussion but its still worth mentioning. About music generation, I feel nervous when AI and art intersect, might be because of my background and art hobbies. Finally, boring AI is probably the best AI out there. Silently ironing out the issues and friction we face in our day-to-day without really being very flashy and glam. Also worries me that we are calling everything AI lately even if its ML or just a smart algorithm. Good for marketing, I guess.