Except that it's not the syntax that makes programming hard, it's the thought process, right?

Exactly!

And, of course, AI doesn't help with the thought process at all, but did made the syntax much simpler to deal with, once again.

So - once again - people who don't understand what you just pointed out, now believe we don't need programmers anymore. Just like the last several times that we "didn't need programmers anymore", for basically the same reason.

I understand that we rinse and repeat the same nonsense for networking, systems administrator, etc, every few years. Some people genuinely believe that the computers are someday going to magically start understanding themselves for us.