We have a chance to adapt, that's for sure. But white-collar work might not exist (or just resemble) as it does today.

But I agree, the category is almost too malleable to analyze.

I can see there a compounding drift from the stable point that is not initially apparent because the compounding values have not yet grown sufficiently to be meaningful. It is still an increase in drift

Slowing down implies a decrease though, what does that represent then?

If anything, if someone is looking for an AI proof job while not wanting to do something braindead, teaching might be one of the good jobs that may get more competitive.

Motivating students to learn is not at all a solved task. And arguably a harder one too. Even the ~2010 "Google and grit" self-teaching is enough to outperform public education - but most students don't have the motivation to do that in practice.

The attention-deficit that is so common among especially (but not only) young people today means that grabbing their interest is of paramount importance to their learning. Just repeating that kids are bad at reading stuffy texts. But if you can put them onto something that they find interesting, they can definitely excel. I've got tales of high school students who are terrible students, but give them a CAD and 3D printer and they will solve any problem you have.

So - in other news, education is broken. How do we fix it?

So this "old testing" framework is at least from 2010s rather than from 1950s.

Tell us more?

Reading, writing, and critical thinking skills matter. You don't have to "write structured interpretations of 1950s texts [you] have no emotional connection to" or practice "handwriting, and reading stuffy texts from front to end" to develop those skills (very loaded language, nice job!), but you have to put a lot of time into doing something, ideally somethings, where you're the one doing the heavy intellectual lifting.

Or, we can just write these kids off as a generation incapable of thinking or building by themselves without AI tools that do the thinking and building for them. Honestly, it's probably already too late. The way we've allowed kids of all ages to be exposed to these tools is basically equivalent to handing out cartons of cigarettes in a preschool.

On a regular basis I have students bring me “machine learning” models they have trained, which sounds great. But they have no idea what problem they are solving, what data they have or should have, and no idea why that method, etc. There is no understanding. They use words and concepts from a broad variety of fields, with confidence, but with little deep understanding. The Internet and AI give access to knowledge which is necessary but not sufficient for wisdom.

While K-12 bears a lot of blame (as a system not “teachers”) I’ve come to believe the problem is more societal. What we value and what kids logically perceive will be them ahead in life. If all they ever see is that surface level performance of knowledge is enough…why bother with more?

Such as?

The Hobbit was published in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings was published 1954-55.

If the kids can't develop an emotional connection to them, that says much more about their teachers than it does the children or modern times.