First, it may not be. It's entirely possible that ChatGPT & it's successors will just become another tool that we use - the bestest auto-complete/intellisense

First, it may not be. It's entirely possible that ChatGPT & it's successors will just become another tool that we use - the bestest auto-complete/intellisense in the world, if you will. That said, qualitatively it feels different because it can produce an answer specific to your question. Like, a lot of 'Googling for the answer' involves putting puzzle pieces together and combining that with what you already know to get an answer. In contrast, it feels like if you wanted a better program you can copy and paste your code into ChatGPT, ask it "How do I improve this?" and it spits out an improved version with a short explanation. No more poring over web pages with advice about code quality, no more trying to figure out how to apply that advice to your specific program, etc. So at this point it's not clear where things are headed, but it certainly seems reasonable that this may be qualitatively different.