In 2026, you cannot pry AI coding tools out of developers’ vise grip, researchers have discovered.   But while AI is undoubtedly helping coders produce code faster, it may not be producing better code, other researchers warn. And that could cause problems down the road for them.  Specifically, in February 2026, respected AI research lab METR published a surprising revelation: Most developers won’t work, even on a limited number of tasks, without AI anymore.  METR had hoped to provide an update to some groundbreaking research published a few months earlier, in 2025, on AI coding productivity.…