If you want to make sure that author URLs redirect to the user’s profile page, eg.

https://mysite.com/author/ben > https://mysite.com/profile/ben

Then add this code to a file in wp-content/mu-plugins/ or to your theme’s functions.php

https://gist.github.com/wp-user-manager/4a31e4f085b8f8a6fed3a1c79a0fd69d