The issue is that, when presented with a situation that requires writing legibly, spelling well, or reading a map, WITHOUT their AI assistants, they will fall apart.
The AI becomes their brain, such that they cannot function without it.
I'd never want to work with someone who is this reliant on technology.
Look, I agree with you, I'm just trying to articulate to someone why they should learn X if they believe an LLM could help them and "an LLM won't always be around" isn't a good argument, because lets be honest, it likely will. This is the same thing as "you won't walk around all day with a calculator in your pocket so you need to learn math"
People who can't do simple addition and multiplication without a calculator (12*30 or 23 + 49) are absolutely at a disadvantage in many circumstances in real life and I don't see how you could think this isn't true. You can't work as a cashier without this skill. You can't play board games. You can't calculate tips or figure out how much you're about to spend at the grocery store. You could pull out your phone and use a calculator in all these situations, but people don't.
On the other hand my master 2 students, most of which learned scripting in the previous year, can't even split a project in multiple files after being explained multiple times. Some have more knowledge and ability than others, but a signifiant fraction is just copy-pasting LLM output to solve whatever is asked from them instead of trying to do it themselves, or asking questions.
This is something I see with other tools. Some people get highly dependent on things like advanced IDE features and don't care to learn how they actually work. That works fine most of the time but if they hit a subtle edge case they are dead in the water until someone else bails them out. In a complicated domain there are always edge cases out there waiting to throw a wrench in things.
Technology is rapidly changing humanity. Maybe for the worse.
Or is pioneering 200 years ago an in-demand skillset that we should be picking up?
I could see a future where pioneering might be useful again.
Or do you have perfect vision and get all your work done during the sunlight hours?
Technology is everywhere, nobody is independent from it.
> The issue is that, when presented with a situation that requires writing legibly, spelling well, or reading a map, WITHOUT their AI assistants, they will fall apart.
The parent poster is positing that for 90% of cases they WILL have their AI assistant because its in their pocket, just like a calculator. It's not insane to think that and its a fair point to ponder.
I do agree that it's a fair point to ponder. It does seem like people draw fairly arbitrary lines in the sand around what skills are "essential" or not. Though I can't even entertain the notion that I shouldn't be concerned about my child's ability to spell.
Seems to me that these gains in technology have always come at a cost, and so far the cost has been worth it for the most part. I don't think it's obviously true that LLMs will be (or won't be) "worth it" in the same way. And anyways the tech is not nearly mature enough yet for me to be comfortable relying on it long term.