Is this fundamentally different from them copy pasting code from StackOverflow or random blog posts, without understanding it?

You know, aside from AI making it super easy and fast to generate this tech debt in whatever amounts they desire?

Even when copy-pasting an entire function from stack overflow, you generally still need to have some understanding of what the inputs and outputs are, even if it remains somewhat of a black box, so that you can plug it into your existing code.

AI removes that need. You don't need to know what the function does at all, so your brain devotes no energy towards remembering or understanding it.