AI-Generated Code Passes Syntax Tests but Flunks Security Audits

The gap between what AI coding assistants can do (produce syntactically correct, runnable code) and what they should do (write secure code) is hardening into a structural problem rather than a temporary growing pain. If security defect rates in AI-generated code remain flat even as compilation success climbs, the models are optimizing for the wrong objective function—rewarding completion over safety—and human code review is becoming a mandatory tax on any production deployment, not an optional quality gate. Companies adopting AI coding tools don't save labor proportionally; they shift the bottleneck from writing to auditing.