I do not think "AI coding" - as distinct from the human who drives it - is gambling. More like a delayed footgun for the uneducated. I don't mean that disparagingly, but I do mean it literally.

    I’ve certainly been spending more time coding. But is it because it’s making me more efficient and smarter or is it because I’m just gambling on what I want to see? 

Is this really a difficult question to answer for oneself? If you can't tell if you're learning anything, or getting more confident describing what you want, I would suggest that you cannot be thinking that deeply about the code you're producing.

    Am I just pulling the lever until I reach jackpot?

And even then, will you know you've won?

At the very least, a gambler knows when they have hit jackpot. Here, you start off assuming you've won the jackpot every time, and maybe there'll be an unpleasant surprise down the line. Maybe that's still gambling, but it's pretty backwards.