After working alongside AI polyp-detection tools, endoscopists at four Polish centers saw their unassisted adenoma detection rate fall from 28.4% to 22.4%. The retrospective design leaves room for confounders — workload shifts, temporal changes. But the direction is consistent with what a 2025 meta-analysis of procedural skills quantified more precisely: accuracy-based skills lose roughly half their acquisition gains within 6.5 months of nonuse. Intermittent practice was a significant moderator, which means the decay responds to countermeasures — if someone designs them in.
Automated driving research adds a useful complication. Across 129 studies, urgency produced faster takeover reactions, but reaction speed and takeover quality turned out to have different determinants. Prior experience and adequate time budgets improved quality. Urgency alone did not.
What connects these findings across colonoscopy suites, driving simulators, and skill-retention labs is a structural fact about how competence works: it requires representative exposure and periodic unaided practice. Without those, the erosion is slow enough that nobody notices the accumulating deficit until something goes wrong.
Endoscopy: Adenoma detection fell 6 percentage points after AI exposure. Multivariable analysis found AI exposure independently associated with lower detection (OR 0.69). Retrospective design; confounders possible. Budzyń et al., Lancet Gastroenterol Hepatol, Oct 2025
Skill decay: Half of accuracy-based skill gains lost in ~6.5 months without practice. Speed-based skills more durable (~13 months). 1,344 effect sizes across 457 reports. Tatel et al., Psychological Bulletin, June 2025
Driving takeover: Faster responses come with more variability — mean and standard deviation of takeover time are highly correlated. Prior experience shortened reaction by ~1 second on repeat scenarios. 129 studies, 4,556 participants. Zhang et al., Transportation Research Part F, 2019
Mammography: Junior radiologists showed 41.7% automation bias when given incorrect AI recommendations; seniors showed 30.0%. Experience reduced susceptibility but did not eliminate it. Pesapane et al., European Radiology, May 2026