I don't think I misunderstood the question.
In my team people left and that understanding was gone too. Over time, the level of understanding was less and less.
I agree with you that strictly speaking, there is no active human understanding of code that LLMs generate. However, we have an on-demand ability to get an arbitrary level of understanding quickly by leveraging the same LLMs. The amount of effort for any person to get an understanding of that code is in my opinion smaller than what it was with humans.
With a human team, if I wanted to understand some code, I would read it, meet with the authors, and slowly build up that understanding. With LLMs, I can ask it to slice and dice the code and present it in any way I feel would help me understand it, immediately.
Summarizing and transforming ideas is something LLMs are fantastic at. They are an incredible tool to understand foreign code.
In my team people left and that understanding was gone too. Over time, the level of understanding was less and less.
I agree with you that strictly speaking, there is no active human understanding of code that LLMs generate. However, we have an on-demand ability to get an arbitrary level of understanding quickly by leveraging the same LLMs. The amount of effort for any person to get an understanding of that code is in my opinion smaller than what it was with humans.
With a human team, if I wanted to understand some code, I would read it, meet with the authors, and slowly build up that understanding. With LLMs, I can ask it to slice and dice the code and present it in any way I feel would help me understand it, immediately.
Summarizing and transforming ideas is something LLMs are fantastic at. They are an incredible tool to understand foreign code.