Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

I flip flop daily on whether it has or not. Even the best AI engines write truly awful code, and it might not improve. But it also makes it easier for people to coast, and turn in half assed work, which is certainly a pathway to the decline of knowledge work

> it also makes it easier for people to coast, and turn in half assed work, which is certainly a pathway to the decline of knowledge work

I understand your sentiment and I partially agree with it. But this kind of phrasing implies that "doing the bare minimum" (to put it in another way) is a strictly bad thing.

Sure, its easy to condemn someone "half-assing" a job by labeling him as lazy or something like that. But the reality is that most of the time we don't need the best nor we are willing to pay properly for this effort.

Imagine your baker, for example. Do you really need 100% of his effort and care to be put into every single bread he makes? For me this answer is "no". All I care is that he comply with all regulations and that his bread tastes good, I don't really mind if it's not best bread in the world. And even if it was the best I probably would find it too expensive to buy in a daily basis.

Another example would be blacksmiths, at some point they we our only option to make something out of metal, and they would put quite a lot of care and attention to every piece they made. But at some we created some machines that can create things out of metal. These machines, at first, weren't really good and the products they made were of inferior quality. But they had enough quality to be useful, were cheaper and were able to produce immense quantities of goods.

What I'm trying to say is that sometimes the "low effort" option is the correct choice. And I don't think this means the decline of knowledge work, this just means we will see a change in what is considered "relevant skills" for knowledge work.

>But this kind of phrasing implies that "doing the bare minimum" (to put it in another way) is a strictly bad thing.

It is. It shows a lack of character. Have some pride in your work. Have some pride in yourself. Being lazy is pathetic.

>Sure, its easy to condemn someone "half-assing" a job by labeling him as lazy or something like that. But the reality is that most of the time we don't need the best nor we are willing to pay properly for this effort.

There is no such thing as "need". You don't need anything. People lived for thousands of years on a diet of mostly grains living in uninsulated houses with open fires. Everything is a want. People's wants are never satisfied, you can always want more.

But even if nobody else will appreciate it, you should do the right thing anyway. You should do it because you take pride in your work.

>Imagine your baker, for example. Do you really need 100% of his effort and care to be put into every single bread he makes? For me this answer is "no".

Nothing to do with what I want. He needs to put in the effort. He needs to do it for himself.

>These machines, at first, weren't really good and the products they made were of inferior quality. But they had enough quality to be useful, were cheaper and were able to produce immense quantities of goods.

The men that designed the machine, or ran the machine, or made the moulds, or assembled the parts, all of them worked bloody hard and were proud to do so for their families and for themselves. Work ethic was prized. This wasn't low effort. It was a different tradeoff between material inputs and material outputs, but it required no lesser work ethic. It didn't permit laziness or idleness.