Some of this has always been a part of computer science. I have likened computer languages as being critical to software engineering in the same sense that speaking English is critical to lawyers. If you show up in court, at least where I live, you hear the lawyers talk in English. However, they need to know quite a bit more. The “more” is the hard part. Algorithms and data structures and math have for a while mattered more than programming languages.
Regarding the shift to AI, I think that understanding the underlying math and algorithms and techniques is important. To me the thing that comes through the strongest is that people who can understand what AI / ML is actually doing, and can use it effectively, will be gaining in value and impact. This however is not easy stuff to fully understand. A very smart person who is good at math / quantitative stuff and who is just starting university now might want to think about this as an area to learn something about.
Unfortunately AI when it is good can be very, very good, but when it is bad it can be horrid. This is approximately a paraphrase of how a professor once described Newton’s method for finding the zero of a continuous function, but it seems to apply to AI also. Someone needs to verify that what AI is doing is actually good and appropriate, and this probably needs to be someone who has at least some clue regarding what AI is doing. I sort of doubt that “someone who knows what AI is doing” includes our elected politicians.
This does concern me. If a person has nothing to do, they will find something to do. A lot of this will be either productive or harmless, but for a few people it may be destructive. I do not think that it takes all that much destructive to pull a society apart.
A different weird thought just occurred to me. Years ago I read a book that pointed out that political power tends to follow military power. If I remember this correctly: At one point castles were the most important and powerful part of war. Kings ruled (or sometimes Queens), and intellectuals talked about the divine rights of royalty. Then gunpowder came along, knocked down walls, and whomever could put together a military ruled. Then industry was most powerful, and democracy became important because the workers in a factory were the most important military power (World War 2 was won by factories, including American factories that could not be bombed). This much is about as much as I remember from the book (or article?). However, it occurs to me that now in Ukraine drones are becoming militarily important. Who can build the drones? Who can build the AI that runs the drones? This is not a skill that is equally spread among all of us. I am wondering if this will have an impact on a historic level. However, transitions from one center of power to another do not tend to be peaceful.
We might be living in interesting times.
I will try to find the book (if it is still sitting in my old piles of reading material). It may take me a while to re-read it.