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.

I guess the thing is I don’t want to do the “bare minimum” I want what I do in life to mean something. I want to work hard and care about everything I do. Whether that’s family or work or leisure. Coasting and doing the bare minimum is not a good way to live. Society is pushing people to spend more and more of their life on meaningless slop, then wonder why there is a mental health crisis.

Totally feel this.

It sucks, because so few things in tech _are_ meaningful, and exist for a reason other than to enrich whoever owns the company making it.