AI Didn't Break Your Culture. It Exposed It.

The article argues that AI tools like ChatGPT didn't create dysfunctional engineering cultures—they merely exposed pre-existing problems where teams lacked shared decision-making frameworks and relied on external authorities instead of building internal judgment. The author reflects on having been an 'oracle' himself, recognizing that teams defer to convenient authorities (senior engineers, Stack Overflow, now ChatGPT) when culture never required them to articulate reasoning or stress-test assumptions. The core issue is borrowed credibility and abdication of critical thinking, which AI simply accelerates rather than causes.