memes

I suspect that this is "grumpy old man" type thinking, but my concern is the loss of fundamental skills.

As an example, like many other people I've spent the last few decades developing written communication skills, emailing clients regarding complex topics. Communication requires not only an understanding of the subject, but an understanding of the recipient's circumstances, and the likelihood of the thoughts and actions that may arise as a result.

Over the last year or so I've noticed my assistants using LLMs to draft emails with deleterious results. This use in many cases reduces my thinking feeling experienced and trained assistant to an automaton regurgitating words from publicly available references. The usual response to this concern is that my assistants are using the tool incorrectly, which is certainly the case, but my argument is that the use of the tool precludes the expenditure of the requisite time and effort to really learn.

Perhaps this is a kind of circular argument, like why do kids need to learn handwriting when nothing needs to be handwritten.

It does seem as though we're on a trajectory towards stupider professional services though, where my bot emails your bot who replies and after n iterations maybe they've figured it out.