Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

I’m surprised not many people talk about this, but a big reason corporations are able to do layoffs is just that they’re doing less. At my work we used to have thousands of ideas of small improvements to make things better for our users. Now we have one: AI. It’s not that we’re using AI to make all these small improvements, or even planning on it. We’re just… not doing them. And I don’t think my experience is very unique.

I think people need to get used to the idea that the West is just going backwards in capability. Go watch CGI in a movie theatre and it's worse than 20 years ago, go home to play video games and the new releases are all remasters of 20 year old games because no-one knows how to do anything any more. And these are industries which should be seeing the most progress, things are even worse in hard-tech at Boeing or whatever.

Whenever people see old systems still in production (say things that are over 30 years old) the assumption is that management refused to fund the replacement. But if you look at replacement projects so many of them are such dismal failures that's management's reluctance to engage in fixing stuff is understandable.

From the outside, decline always looks like a choice, because the exact form the decline takes was chosen. The issue is that all the choices are bad.

In Japan right now and I see a ton of automation everywhere, self checkout at grocery stores and restaurants, but what you also see is a live humanbeing assigned to the machines to help you if you have issues.

> In Japan right now and I see a ton of automation everywhere, self checkout at grocery stores and restaurants, but what you also see is a live humanbeing assigned to the machines to help you if you have issues.

Isn't that how self checkout happens in every part of the world that has self checkout? I'm failing to see what's special about self checkout in Japan.

Anecdotally, the staff:machines ratio is much lower here than I've seen in Europe or US, and they also just pay more attention, and are more proactive (you'll get staff at Muji making sure that you're aware that you can't check out tax-free).

The staff will also instantly materialize if they are needed to confirm you can buy alcohol, or there is some kind of problem; which is also not my experience elsewhere.

It's not a worldshattering difference, but it is noticeable.