I saw a case of a 2008 Tahoe where the AFM was inactive for about two years with the car running about 155k miles due to sensor problem that causes the AFM to be disabled. Once he fixed the problem, AFM kicked back working again, but after that for a short period of time, lifters gone bad. Carbon deposit was building up for the whole time, and once the AFM worked agin they get stuck. My suggestions are, if you will disable AFM, then don’t return it back again. The other option, is to clean the engine regularly with flushing and probably (Seafoam/CRC) intake valves cleaner to maintain as much as possible of internal components so if you return AFM, hopefully it will not cause a problem. This is as well comes together with choosing good oil brand and change it regularly. This video is helpful to understand the importance of keeping the internal parts clean of GDI engines,, @ 8:05 he starts talking about carbon deposit that affects the valves and lifters at the same time.