The cost of outsourcing a skill is NOT a simple binary. Humans, and our nearest relatives birds, naturally make and use tools. It’s in the genes. When an object is too hard to reach or too heavy to lift, we find external ways to do it.

More sophisticated automation has been around for a few hundred years, and until VERY recently was mostly advantageous. Repetitive precise tasks like weaving cloth and building cars are beyond the patience and precision of most people. Carrying several tons for a thousand miles is beyond the strength of everyone.

Computers started to turn the tables in 1960, displacing mental tasks that are NOT beyond the ability of people with the right talent.

Generative AI crossed the last line, displacing ALL the tasks that were formerly considered precious and unstealable.

The AI companies are inviting youngsters to ELIMINATE THEIR OWN SKILL by playing around with the chatbot. Oh boy! This is fun! Now I don’t need to write or think or paint or sing! Those tasks are so so so so tiring and repetitive, like picking cotton or carrying rocks.

The last sentence is the key. Who persuaded young people that the last refuge of human talent is identical to lifting bales and toting barges?

Assisted skillicide.

= = = = =

With deep credit to Stan Freberg, who was fighting this fight in 1957,

Geriatric individual chatbot,
That geriatric individual chatbot,
She/he must know something,
But they/ve doesn’t say anything,
One just keeps coding,
Just keeps coding along.

Them doesn’t write novels,
Xe doesn’t paint pictures,
And them that paints them
Is soon forgotten,
But chatbot experiencing geriatricity,
Ze just keeps coding along.

You and me, we text and tweet,
Thumbs all aching with painful heat,
Sing that song!
Write that play!
Grab a little smoke
And you land in jail.

Geriatric individual chatbot,
That geriatric individual chatbot,
She/hir must know something,
But they/ve doesn’t say anything,
One just keeps coding,
Just keeps coding along.