> but I did not feel that I knew the codebase enough to be able to actually assess the correctness of the change.

> I want to do good engineering, not produce slop, but for [...]

IFF this is true, you can already stop. This will never be good engineering. Guess and check, which is what your describing, you're letting the statistical probability machine make a prediction, and then instead of verifying it, you're assuming the tests will check your work for you. That's ... something, but it's not good engineering.

> That has to be worth something.

if it was so easy, why hasn't someone else done it already? Perhaps the cost value, in the code base you don't understand isn't actually worth that specific something?

> I could see a few ways forward:

> Send it, but be clear that it came from AI, I don't know if it works, and ask the reviewers to pay special attention to it because of that...

so, off load all the hard work on to the maintainers? Where's that 2 days of eng time your claiming in that case?

> Or Send it as normal, because it passes tests/linters, and review should be the same regardless of author or provenance.

guess, and check; is not good engineering.

> Interestingly, the pro-AI folks almost universally doubled down and said that I should use AI more to gain more confidence – ask how can I test it, how can we verify it, etc – to move my confidence instead of changing how review works.

the pro-ai groups are pro AI? I wouldn't call that interesting. What did the Anti-AI groups suggest?

> the AI "fixed" so many things to "improve" the code that I completely lost all confidence in the change because there were clearly things that were needed and things that weren't, and disentangling them was going to be way more work than starting from scratch.

Yeah, that's the problem with AI isn't it? It's not selling anything of significant value... it's selling false confidence in something of minimal value... but only with a lot of additional work from someone who understands the project. Work that you already pointed out, can only be off loaded to the maintainers who understand the code base...

General follow up question... if AI is writing all the PRs, what happens when eventually no one understands the code base?