[seletskiy]

I would say that AI is not to blame here. It just accelerated existing process, but didn't initiate it. We (as a society) started to value quantity over quality some time ago, and, apparently, no-one care enough to change it.

Why tighten the bolts on the airplane's door yourself if you can just outsource it somewhere cheaper (see Boeing crisis)?

Why design and test hundreds of physical and easy-to-use knobs in the car if you can just plug a touchscreen (see Tesla)?

Why write a couple of lines of code if you can just include an `is-odd` library (see bloated npm ecosystem)?

Why figure out how to solve a problem on your own if you can just copy-paste answer from somewhere else (see StackOverflow)?

Why invest time and effort into making a good TV if you can just strap Android OS on a questionable hardware (look in your own house)?

Why run and manage your project on a baremetal server if you can just rent Amazon DynamoDB (see your company)?

Why spend months to find and hire one good engineer if you can just hire ten mediocre ones (see any other company)?

Why spend years educating to identify a tumor on a MRI scans if you can just feed it to a machine learning algorithm (see your hospital)?

What more could I name?

In my take, which you can say is pessimistic, we already passed the peak of civilization as we know it. If we continue business as usual, things will continue to detiorate, more software will fail, more planes will crash, more people will be unemployed, more wars would be started. Yes, decent engineers (or any other decent specialists) will be likely a winners in a short term, but how the future would unfold when there will be less and less of them is a question I leave for the reader.

[robertlagrant]

> Why tighten the bolts on the airplane's door yourself if you can just outsource it somewhere cheaper (see Boeing crisis)?

This is just an overreach of a process that means that airplane flights aren't $1m+. Aircraft issues have plummeted, if you'll excuse the expression, while flight numbers have soared. You've got to have noticed that.

[jodrellblank]

You haven't answered those questions. Tesla's touchscreen displays maps, navigation, self-driving's model of the world around the car, reversing camera, distance to car in front, etc. Yes personally I prefer a physical control I can reach for without looking, but the physcial controls in my car cannot do as much as a touchscreen, cannot control as many systems as a modern car has. And that means something like a BMW iDrive running some weird custom OS in amongst the physical controls, and that was not a nice convenient system to use either.

Why write a couple of lines of code when you can just include an `is-odd` library? Hopefully one which type checks integers vs floats, and checks for overflows. I'm not stating that I could not write one if/else, I'm asking you to do more than sneer and actually justify why a computer loading a couple of lines of code from a file is the end of the world.

Why invest time and effort into making a good TV if people aren't going to buy it, because they are fine with the competitor's much cheaper Android OS on questionable hardware?

Why run and manage your project on a baremetal server, and deal with its power requirements and cooling and firmware patching and driver version compatibility and out-of-band management and hardware failures and physical security and supply chain lead times and needing to spec it for the right size up front and commit thousands of dollars to it immediately, if you can just rent Amazon DynamoDB and pay $10 to get going right now?

I could fill in the answers you are expecting, I have seen that pattern argued, and argued it myself, but it boils down to "I dislike laggy ad-filled Android TV so it shouldn't exist". And I do dislike it, but so what, I'm not world dictator. No company has taken over the market making a responsive Android-free TV, so how/why should they be made to make one, and with what justification?

> What more could I name?

Why go to a cobbler for custom fitted shoes when you could just buy sneakers from a store? (I assume you wear mass produced shoes?) Why go to a tailor when you could just buy clothes made off-shore for cheaper? (I assume you wear mass produced clothes?) Why learn to play a keyboard, guitar, drums and sing, when you could just listen to someone else's band? (I assume you listen to music?) Why spend months creating characters and scenarios and writing a novel when you could just read one someone else wrote? (I assume you have read books?) Why grow your own food when you could just buy lower quality industrially packaged food from a shop? (I assume you aren't a homesteader?) Why develop your own off-grid power system with the voltage and current and redundancy and storage you need when you could just buy from the mains? (I assume you use mains electricity?)

You could name every effort-saving, money-saving, time-saving, thing you use which was once done by hand with more effort, more cost, and less convenience.

And then state that the exact amount of price/convenience/time/effort you happened to grow up with, is the perfect amount (what a coincidence!) and change is bad.