AI makes it easy to generate code, explanations, answers to review questions, and entire docs without the author understanding any of it. Everything can look finished. Actually, more often than not, it can even be correct (!) without the author having checked it.

And that is the part that I’ve been struggling with recently, and what most of this post is about… I used to start reviewing work with the assumption that the other person did their homework. Now that may or may not be true, so instead of starting the review with a “is this a good change?” Now I often start with, “does the author understand what they’re sending me?”