Large chunks, yes, but all that means is that engineers will move up the abstraction stack and become more efficient, not that engineers will be replaced.
Bytecode -> Assembly -> C -> higher level languages -> AI-assisted higher-level languages
> engineers will move up the abstraction stack and become more efficient
Above a certain threshold of ability, yes.
The same will hold true for designers. DALL-E-alikes will be integrated with the Adobe suite.
The most cutting edge designers will speak 50 variations of their ideas into images, then use their hard-earned granular skills to fine-tune the results.
They'll (with no code) train models in completely new, unique-to-them styles--in 2D, 3D, and motion.
Organizations will pay top dollar for designers who can rapidly infuse their brands with eye-catching material in unprecedented volume. Imitators will create and follow YouTube tutorials.
Mom & pop shops will have higher fidelity marketing materials in half the time and half the cost.
History isn't a great guide here. Historically the abstractions that increased efficiency begat further complexity. Coding in Python elides over low-level issues but the complexity of how to arrange the primitives of python remains for the programmer to engage with. AI coding has the potential to elide over all the complexity that we identify as programming. I strongly suspect this time is different.
The space for "AI-assisted higher-level languages" sufficiently distinct from natural language is vanishingly small. Eventually you're just speaking natural language to the computer, which just about anyone can do (perhaps with some training).
The hard part of programming has always been gathering and specifying requirements, to the point where in many cases actually using natural language to do the second part has been abandoned in favor of vague descriptions that are operationalized through test cases and code.
AI that can write code from a natural language description doesn't help as much as you seem to think if natural language description is too hard to actually bother with when humans (who obviously benefit from having a natural language description) are writing the code.
Now, if the AI can actually interview stakeholders and come up with what the code needs to do...
But I am not convinced that is doable short of AGI (AI assistants that improve productivity of humans in that task, sure, but that expands the scope for economically viable automation projects rather than eliminating automators.)
At some point we will be "replaced". When you get AI to be able to navigate all user interfaces, communicate with other agents, plan long term and execute short term, we will no longer be the main drivers of economical growth.
At some point AI will become as powerful as companies.
And then AI will be able to sustain positive feedback loop of creating more powerful company like ecosystems that will create even more powerful ecosystems. This process will be fundamentally limited by available power and the sun can provide a lot of power. Eventually AI will be able to support space economy and then the only limit will be the universe.
Bytecode -> Assembly -> C -> higher level languages -> AI-assisted higher-level languages