I interpret "faster than AI" to include writing the prompt. For me (scientific computing) it is more often than not faster to write out a simulation or design in a language I know inside out like fortran or mathematica than explicate the requirements to an LLM to request the code. Obviously if someone wrote out a prompt to me and the LLM it would be way faster, but I don't think that's what the commenter had in mind.

If you're good at SQL, or SQL-like languages like Linq, it might be more efficient precisely writing a reasonably complex query than trying to explain it in detail to an AI.

Not the parent but I've had this happen when debugging for sure. Sometimes I ask Claude Code to help me debug something and it makes a wrong assumption and just churns in circles burning tokens. While it's doing that I realize the problem and fix it.