>can't get past the argument that people said the same thing when we switched from everyone using ASM to C/Fortran

that's a bad comparison for two reasons. One is that C is a transparent language that requires understanding of its underlying mechanics. Using C doesn't absolve you from understanding lower concepts and was never treated as such. The power of C comes squarely with a warning label that this is a double edged sword.

Secondly insofar as people have used higher level languages as a replacement for understanding and introduced a "everyone can code now" mentality the criticism has been validated. What we've gotten, long before AI tooling, were shoddy, slow, insecure tower-of-babel like crappy codebases that were awful for the exact same reason these newest practices are awful.

Introducing new technology must never be an excuse for ignorance, the more powerful the tool the greater the knowledge required of the user. You don't hand the most potent dangerous weapon to the least competent soldier.