Yesterday I wrote about Upskilling, and it felt hopeful — learning, growing, becoming more capable. Today I want to name its opposite: Deskilling. It’s less comfortable to talk about, but just as important, because people are living it, and it’s good to name it.

Deskilling is the process of making a job simpler. It requires less training, less learning, fewer special skills to perform. New technology — AI, computers, cell phones — replaces human judgment and human hands with the push of a button. It’s really about division of labor: breaking a rich, complex process into small pieces so that almost anyone can do one piece of it.

Think of a coffee machine replacing a skilled barista. Or think of standardized teaching kits replacing teachers who once built original lessons from their own knowledge and creativity for their students. The task still gets done. A coffee gets poured, a lesson gets delivered. But something essential is lost, and in the classroom, it’s the students who pay for it. A scripted kit can hand over facts. It can’t improvise when a student is confused, can’t follow a spark of curiosity into an unplanned discussion, can’t adjust on the spot to how a particular room of kids is actually thinking that day. Real learning — the kind that changes how a young person sees the world — usually happens in exactly those improvised, original moments.

Deskilling lowers production costs. It lowers training costs. It makes workers easier to replace. And that, unfortunately, can also mean lower wages and more alienation at work. People who take pride in their work, who are inspired to create and produce, find less meaning in it. This is sometimes called skill erosion, or more bluntly, dumbing down.

When AI takes over tasks that once required a human’s full skill and attention, that erosion happens quickly and sometimes goes unnoticed. People shift from being active participants to passive operators, and passivity, over time, breeds boredom, and boredom can shift to frustration and anger.

This is a vital problem to name and address, because no one wants to end up being run by AI when we could be in charge of it instead. Using it as a partner, not a replacement. Working with AI without fear. Using it to increase our own creativity, loyalty, and inspiration at work, and in our communities.

Naming Deskilling doesn’t mean rejecting technology. It means staying awake to what a new tool costs as well as what it gives, and choosing, deliberately, which parts of our skill and judgment we refuse to hand over. That choice is ours to make. It always has been.

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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This is also related – Upskilling.

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