To torture the woodworking analogy, your assumption is that the carpenter has no control over ripping the boards. In some instances that may very well be the case, but there will also the instances where the carpenter does have influence over creating the boards, or even wholesale control over ripping them. In those cases, using a planer to fix poorly ripped boards may not be the best approach.
Even in your examples, yes, you have to work with other teams. "Control" doesn't mean you have dictatorial control. But it does sometimes mean you have build relationships, leverage what you can, and explain the value to those that do have some modicum of control. The idea that we just throw our hands up and jump to workarounds can work, but it's often an excuse for taking the short-term easy at the expense of a better long-term solution. Even when you're using tools as a workaround, you're surrendering control to those tools/developers.
Cost of implementing better process for all carpenters is significantly higher, than all carpenters still using bad process + _one_ AI being able to clean it for carpenter, plumber, translator, developer (you name it, you got it).
Not even entering laziness/corposlowness gardens etc.
"Corposlowness" is just another name for "bad processes". It supports the claim rather than negates it. Using AI to overcome bad bureaucracy makes it a workaround, not an idealized process. What often happens when implementing workarounds rather than good processes is that the workaround can create bloat and waste of its own and overtime, not really fix the problem. Like hiring more administrators for a large organization, they can take on a life of their own, eventually becoming divorced from the problem they were intended to solve.
Again, I'm not saying that AI is misapplied in Tao's case. I'm just cautioning that it's not a panacea for bad processes. In many ways, it can be misused as a band-aid for bad processes, just like creating excess inventory is a band-aid for bad quality control.
There are a couple of reasons why it would be hard to change the upstream process to not necessitate planers. The main one is that logs are typically ripped into boards when the wood is still green, and in the process of drying, boards change shape and dimensions: they bow, cup, warp, and shrink, and you might still need a planer to bring them back to flatness and to desired final thickness.
A woodworking example is that a planer is great tool that helps you make nice flat surfaces. But, to a certain extent, it's a downstream fix that wouldn't be necessary if a carpenter was using a better overall process. I.e., if their upstream process for cutting/ripping wood made nice flat surfaces to begin with, the awesomeness of the planer becomes moot. (Apologies to the legitimate woodworkers if this analogy is off).
Where tools like GPT becomes invaluable is when you have no control over those upstream processes but still need to get the job done. But leveraging a tool for a downstream fix when upstream fixes are possible is usually less-good approach to creating good systems.