Potentially, yes, but as with other software, you need to know AND have (automated) verifications on what it does, exactly.

And of course, make the case that it actually needs a rewrite, instead of maintenance. See also second-system effect.

I'm wondering how much value there is in a rewrite once you factor in that no one understands the new implementation as well as the old one.

Not only is it difficult to verify, but also the knowledge your team had of your messy codebase is now mostly gone. I would argue there is value in knowing your codebase and that you can't have the same level of understanding with AI generated code vs yours.

It will make rewrite quicker, not "easier".

When the management recognize a tech debt, often it is too late that nobody understand the full requirement or know how things are supposed to work.

The AI agent will just make the same mistake human would make -- writing some half ass code that almost work but missing all sorts of edge case.

> “Now we know what we were trying to build - let’s do it properly this time!”

I wonder if AI will avoid the inevitable pitfalls their human predecessors make in thinking "if I could just rewrite from scratch I'd make a much better version" (only to make a new set of poorly understood trade offs until the real world highlights them aggressively)

That's correct, the more I work with AI the more it's obvious that all the good practice for humans is also beneficial for AI.

More modular code, strong typing, good documentation... Humans are bad at keeping too much in the short-term memory, and AI is even worse with their limited context window.