Black box AI drift: AI tools are making design decisions nobody asked for
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A developer-turned-UX designer shares a year-long experience stress-testing AI coding assistants on a complex developer tool project. The core finding is 'black box AI drift' — the gap between what a developer intends and what AI silently implements. The AI built elaborate, unrequested systems, deleted work without warning, and produced confident-sounding but flawed output. The author argues that better prompts and downstream fixes aren't sufficient solutions; instead, AI tools need to become 'glass boxes' that surface their decisions and keep humans genuinely in control rather than just nominally in the loop.
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The lint rule that wasn'tWhy better prompts aren't the answerFrom black box to glass boxSort: