{"id":4448,"date":"2025-09-04T01:44:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T06:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/?p=4448"},"modified":"2025-08-16T07:13:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T12:13:58","slug":"deskilling-or-i-forgot-what-i-was-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/2025\/09\/deskilling-or-i-forgot-what-i-was-doing\/","title":{"rendered":"Deskilling or I Forgot What I Was Doing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>It seems that when we stop doing something, we forget how to do it, sort of.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I recently read reports of AI causing &#8220;deskilling.&#8221; (pronounced de-skilling, not des-killing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It seems that some folks were using AI tools to do something they used to do all the time. After a few months, one of those senior-level decision makers decided to take away the AI tools. The folks struggled to do what they had done earlier. They had de-skilled. I guess that is a nice way of saying they forgot what they were doing. The forgetting, of course, was temporary. They remembered what they knew and went on with the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a way to put a piece of paper into a typewriter so that it is straight. I used to know how to do that. I don&#8217;t any longer. I guess with some practice I could re-learn or re-skill that. There is a way to put tractor feed paper into a tractor feed printer so that it is straight. Same thing with that skill. I was de-skilled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then again, as I have noted in some other blog post somewhere at some time, these tools can teach us things that we didn&#8217;t realize we knew. Did you notice such and such? Yes, that is how this tool works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Funny how the mind works. Practice something and it becomes something we do without thinking. The headlights on my car turn themselves on and off. I can&#8217;t remember how to do that. No great loss. Now, that typewriter thing had something to do with moving that roller thing so the paper could slide around loosely or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Dwayne Phillips It seems that when we stop doing something, we forget how to do it, sort of. I recently read reports of AI causing &#8220;deskilling.&#8221; (pronounced de-skilling, not des-killing) It seems that some folks were using AI tools to do something they used to do all the time. After a few months, one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[469,106,20,427,292],"tags":[470,220,142,428,295],"class_list":["post-4448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","category-knowledge","category-learning","category-remember","category-tools","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-knowledge","tag-learning","tag-remember","tag-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4449,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4448\/revisions\/4449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}