Cognitive Surrender

Addy Osmani separates cognitive offloading (delegating while keeping your own judgment) from cognitive surrender (accepting AI output without forming an understanding of your own). Engineers are unusually exposed: code looks correct by default, and productivity metrics can’t tell understanding from approval. The habit compounds into what he calls comprehension debt. His countermeasures are small and practical: form an expectation before reading the output, read diffs critically, ask the model for counter-arguments, and notice when fatigue is making you rubber-stamp.

Another name in the growing vocabulary around cognitive debt and cognitive coverage.