The Great AI Deskilling has begun (Business Insider, March 28)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-deskilling-impact-on-worker-skills-productivity-2026-3

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John Nosta, founder of innovation and tech think tank Nosta Lab, calls this the "AI rebound effect" — when better performance masks declining ability. "The skill set actually falls below baseline," he said. The danger isn't only dependency — it's regression.

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If that inversion becomes the norm, the stakes are larger than productivity. "Human cognition is on the obsolescence chopping block," he added.

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The full impact of that shift may take years to fully show up. But the early signs are already visible, and those most at risk are the ones early in their careers.

"Right now, most professionals learned their craft before AI, so they have the baseline," Jan Tegze, author of "Job Search Guide" and "How to Talk to AI," told Business Insider. "The risk is with those who never build that baseline at all."

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Much more at the link.

And see this thread:

Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them. (Psychology Today, 3/22)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221115812

And in addition to knowledge/skills being lost, using AI can undermine judgment.

AI chatbots are suck-ups, and that may be affecting your relationships (Scientific American, 3/26)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221128288

Generative AI can mimic intelligence because it's trained on vast data sets of stolen intellectual property. But it isn't real intelligence, and the more people use it and come to rely on it, the less intelligent they become.

[cachukis]

1. It is happening without AI. AI will exacerbate.

Last edited Sun Mar 29, 2026, 04:11 PM - Edit history (2)

[dickthegrouch]

2. I think you meant exacerbate, but I agree.

If Abundant Iniquity is taking over entry-level jobs, it's going to be extremely difficult to obtain the base-level experience needed to become a professional.
The skilled poeple get older, and no-one replaces then, and you end up with acolytes tending machines they know absolutely nothing about, and collapse of the usefulness (maybe even the utility) of the machines, starting a new cycle of having to learn everything from scratch.

[RandomNumbers]

3. In IT, some companies ditched entry-level jobs before AI became big.

(at least in my specialty)

The c-suite seems to think it is somehow better to farm out the work to contractors rather than hire entry-level and train in-house.

I think it's moronic but I'm not a CIO, so what do I know?

(and the other thing about contractors in many IT roles, they come from the big contractors like Cognizant who know how to manipulate the H-1B system. Meaning, not hiring Americans out of college. )

[highplainsdem]

4. kick