June 18, 2026
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
Key takeaways:
Cognitive debt is thetechnical debt nobody is measuring. When AI generates code faster than engineers can understand it, teams lose track of what their system does and why.- The tool isn’t the problem – therelationship with it****is: two interns used AI at the same frequency. The difference? Whether they engaged with what it produced. Your satisfaction scores are hiding the problem! The most reliable signal isn’t how engineers feel, it’s whether their skills are actually developing.
Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey, professor of computer science at the University of Victoria, first used the term ‘cognitive debt’ in October 2025 while teaching an entrepreneurship startup course.
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June 18, 2026