Meme thinking like this, repeating something you've heard as reflex without regard to whether it fits a situation, is the exact kind of unoriginality we can't allow to become the default mode of thinking.
However, in your moral crusade against using AI you are missing the big picture. No one is making you code with AI. But there are many things that you can only build if you use AI as a component.
The ability to plug a human-like decisionmaker into anything, anywhere massively expands what we can build. There are applications and use cases that you cannot even conceptualize without having the ability to plug AI in. This does not impacting critical thinking whatsoever.
Be original. Put your engineer hat on and think on what this new tool lets you build, that you couldn't beforehand.
