Comment by toniantunovi

The coding-specific version of this is worth naming precisely. The drift does not happen because you stop writing code. It happens because you stop reading the output carefully. With AI-generated code, there is a particular failure mode: the code is plausible enough to pass a quick review and tests pass, so you ship it. The understanding degradation is cumulative and invisible until it is not. The partial fix is making automated checks independent of the developer's attention level: type checking, SAST, dependency analysis, and coverage gates that run regardless of how carefully you reviewed the diff. These are not a substitute for understanding, but they create a floor below which "comfortable drift" cannot silently carry you. The question worth asking of any AI coding workflow is whether that floor exists and where it is.