How Generative and Agentic AI Shift Concern from Technical Debt to Cognitive Debt

The term technical debt is often used to refer to the accumulation of design or implementation choices that later make the software harder and more costly to understand, modify, or extend over time. Technical debt nicely captures that “human understanding” also matters, but the words “technical debt” conjure up the notion that the accrued debt is a property of the code and effort needs to be spent…