How will they know if you're using AI or not?

I would say as a developer you absolutely need to be comfortable using the tools and understanding the possibilities but how much you use it should be up to you within any token / licensing limits.

I remember back in the 90s when people were starting to use IDEs and other developers would use vi or emacs for everything. There was always a suspicion that each camp wasn't doing it properly! Management didn't care as long as the work got done.

This is happening at several (typically big tech) companies. Not all companies and orgs are doing this, however. I'm very firm when I say that any type of "forced AI" usage is a huge mistake and it's also a slap in the face to the employees whom were presumably hired for their skill and talent and should be trusted to make such tool decisions, especially engineering and technical teams, to not trust their judgement on when AI should and should not be used. This is the first time in my career where I've seen leaders who are too high to understand what their folks in the trenches are doing, try to force them to use a tool. The architects and building engineers have a very interesting job, but telling the construction workers which hammer or heavy equipment to use is not and should not be one of them, for a reason. In my experience, engineers will use AI when they need to use AI, but at a handful of companies, AI is being pushed as a solution to problems where it doesn't even make sense, then the companies are backpedaling afterwards because their token costs are through the roof... So they get their employees hooked on using as much AI as possible, then have to come back and say "actually, we need to cap you at $XXX per month." So all of the AI automation that was developed with no limit now can hardly operate effectively and needs to be re-designed... It's completely absurd.

Start looking for a different job, or better yet, build your own business.

Depends on how you use it. Look for use cases where it can reduce work. For instance let's say you usually have poor requirements. You can build a tool to help users properly flesh out their wants. I built a prototype for fun (https://daid-sandy.vercel.app) for stuff like that. Could use it to create documentation templates and let it do the heavy lifting Could also use it as a code critic. You build out a design for an integration or new app and then you can let the AI tool murder board it.

Using AI doesn't mean you're making yourself dumber. It comes down to how you use it.

there are plenty of different ways to take this. You can use it as a supplement without making yourself dumber. Take the parts of your job you hate doing and inject a little AI into the workflow.