A huge amount of stuff can and should be automated by mundane programming. Since that hasn't been done yet, AI isn't about to automate all of the stuff that shouldn't be automated by mundane programming.
You're proving the point of the original post. Today's mundane programing used to be considered AI. See: search, fuzzy logic, character recognition. Or even more mundane: object-oriented programming, interpreted languages, and tons of generic algorithms used in daily life, all of which came out of AI labs.
A huge amount of stuff can and should be automated by mundane programming. Since that hasn't been done yet, AI isn't about to automate all of the stuff that shouldn't be automated by mundane programming.