Who said it was? This is what most programmers do all day, that's the point. These people can be replaced now without writing specialised software for the case. It is programming, not software engineering and it is what people are doing all day long (and longer) who are called programmers / software engineers in most companies all over the world. You can disagree with it, but that doesn't change much.
So you are now putting the bar higher which is not fair; the fact is that people who have the title 'programmer' and even 'software engineer' are now readily replaced by AI. If you don't agree with the title; I don't either, but reality is what it is.
I would say basically the point is ; there are way way too many people being 'programmers' (but not limited to this field) who can be replaced; only a few % should remain as the rest does what you wouldn't call programming, but the rest of the world does. Search twitter for 'html programmer' and such. Millions and millions will never be programmers and your definition, but have a high paying job (for their country) working as a programmer.
This isn't software engineering work, this is 21st century data entry with some code. This is exactly the type of menial work that should be automated by AI.
If you have small self contained problems like map X -> Y then sure, ChatGPT will be sufficient. Where I disagree with you is calling these jobs "programming" jobs. These are the type of tasks that should've been written in a transform language like JOLT. This shouldn't even be code.
> With humans this is a painful and slow process, especially with people who are fast and loose (broken education seems to made many of those graduate just by cheer production speed & volume instead of quality; gpt can do that better too...).
Humans suck at repetitive menial tasks like this. It's not education's fault.