Do you know the legend of stone soup?
A traveler goes to a village that has fallen on hard times. Nobody will give him food. He stops at a farmer’s house and says, “I have a magic stone. It will dissolve into a rich broth full of flavor and nutrients that will make enough delicious soup for the entire village.” So the news goes around town that there will be a soup feast, and everyone brings something to contribute: some vegetables, some meats, some spices, and they all enjoy a delicious soup, never realizing that the traveler had scooped a plain and simple stone out of the cauldron before the guests had arrived.
I feel like AI is kind of the traveller here and the 180,000 lines of shitty code is the stone, and all the work people are going to do in making that code performant are the real ingredients.