Why would an employer hire a non-programmer for a programming job? Do you think that the only people who can use AI to build software are software developers?

Once again, the "democratization" comes from the fact that a growing number of smart people who aren't programmers and who by any reasonable definition haven't taught themselves how to program are now able to use AI to build and ship software products. They aren't recreating Salesforce in a weekend, and they're not coming to take your job, but the latest models are sufficiently good at creating polished (if still uniform looking) web applications with features including access controls, billing, etc. through prompting alone. So non-developers have a new path for creating software themselves without learning to program or hiring a programmer.

As for AI's impact on the labor market for developers, you either believe that a) the need for software will outpace the productivity gains you acknowledge at a significant enough pace so that the number of developers needed and the wages they can command will stay the same or increase or b) AI will reduce the number of developers needed and the wages they can command.

So which one is it? Well, when new grads that would have had multiple 6-figure offers a few years ago are struggling to get hired and you have big tech companies laying off hundreds of thousands of people with CEOs like Zuckerberg making statements like "we're starting to see projects that used to require big teams being accomplished by a single talented person", it sure doesn't look like the former.