That’s been my theory - there’s some low hanging fruit in every environment where AI knocks it out of the park. Then complex brownfield reality (coupled with non-technical factors) rears its head and the stunning productivity gains are nowhere near to be seen.
That’s the explanation how you can have both the anecdotes of amazing AI productivity and rigorous studies showing anything from actual loss of productivity to single-digit gains.
I also think in addition to that the increased speed compounds the problems much quicker. And I don't mean bugs. I mean that duplicated code here, that additional state variable to keep everything going there. Not removing things that should be removed because we can work around that, etc.
It's like building a super tall Jenga tower very quickly but laying the bricks much worse than a careful player.
I think this is directionally right.
The code AI produces is not created equally, not even close.