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AI-generated code can add incompatible models and raise change costs

maevyn.codes 38 min read Editor score 6/10

The essay calls the buildup of locally valid but incompatible or redundant models “decoherence” and argues AI is accelerating it. Its framing may help teams reason about the maintenance costs of AI-assisted development.

What

- Decoherence describes locally valid but incompatible or redundant models that make changes costly to coordinate and protect against side effects.

How

- The essay says decoherence grows with a system’s rate of change and increases faster as the system becomes more decoherent.

Why it matters

- For engineers, accumulated incompatible models can make maintenance and change costs dominate technical debt.

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