There is skill atrophy, and there is also a certain kind of entitlement. I see it in a lot of new grads and students that are very reliant on LLM and "GPT" in particular. They think merely presenting something that looks like a solution, without actually understanding it or why it might or might not be applicable, entitles them to the claim of understanding and, furthermore, a job.
When engineers simply parrot GPT answers I lose respect for them, but I also just wonder "why are you even employed here?"
I'm not some managerial bootlicker desperate for layoffs to "cull the weaklings", but I do start to wonder "what do you actually bring to this job aside from the abilities of a typist?", especially when the whole reason they are getting paid as much as they are as an engineer, for example, is their skills and knowledge. But if that's all really GPT's skills and knowledge and "reasoning", then there just remains a certain entitlement as justifcation.
Who says the pay will remain high? I think we’re going to see either a large drop in white collar pay or massive layoffs.
I agree. The long term effect will be a devaluation of knowledge work more broadly. It's a rich irony that so many people clamor to these tools when their constant use of them is more often the thing undoing their value as knowledge workers: flexibility, creativity, ability to adapt (intellectually) to shifting circumstances and new problems.
A downstream effect will also be the devaluation of many accreditations of knowledge. If someone at a community college arrives at the same answer as someone at an Ivy League or top institution through a LLM then why even maintain the pretenses of the latter's "intellectual superiority" over the other?
Job interviews are likely going to become harder in a way that many are unprepared for and that many will not like. Where I work, all interviews are now in person and put a much bigger emphasis on problem solving, creativity, and getting a handle on someone's ability to understand a problem. Many sections do not allow the candidate to use a computer at all --- you need to know what you're talking about and respond to pointed questions. It's a performance in many ways, for better and worse, and old fashioned by modern tech standards; but we find it leads to better hires.