Definitely I am making a broad assumption with many specifies where one can say "but what about X,Y,Z". Certainly, there are buildings that fall down and bridges collapse but what is the trend? Is software engineering getting better or worse?

From the linked article:

> And I would say that the success of AI coding agents has proved once and for all that we had successfully built an engineering discipline so strong that we are also the first discipline that has been able to successfully run AI at large scale within our discipline.

Yet we have no real clue how AI works or how to debug it, it's a brute force solution to everyday problems. Daily there are new examples of AI "escaping" its enforced cage. Why? Why doesn't AI "just work"? Because we don't truly understand AI.

I think AI is exactly the opposite to "true" engineering where one understands the system and can reproduce it. After all, retraining the AI will probably give you a completely different AI even if the training data was the same.

> Do you have a source for how little maintenance this will need?

In Germany, twice a year inspection is mandatory for infrastructure [1] but this is only a visual inspection. Once every 6 years you got a large inspection [2] that includes a full go over everything including functionality checks plus a review of documentation (if it is still up to code) and of accident documentation, as well as a "knock test" on every m² of surface [3]. Fire safety systems are checked every quarter [4].

And out of these reports then you get action items. Depending on the severity of findings, it can be anything from "someone needs to do this until the next major inspection" to "holy cow stop ALL traffic NOW".

[1] https://www.stbapa.bayern.de/service/medien/meldungen/2023/2...

[2] https://www.fba.bund.de/DE/Meldungen/20230201_Tunneluntersuc...

[3] https://www.merkur.de/lokales/muenchen/baustellen-besuch-sta...

[4] https://www.autobahn.de/aktuelles/aktuell/tunnelwartung-im-b...