Some of it is the fault of the OSes all trying to act like smartphone OSes. Which do everything possible to remove the ability to really know where all your actual data is on the device. Just goes on there with a “trust me bro, I know where it is so you don’t need to” vibe. I have unironically had someone really really need a couple of specific files. And their answer to me when I asked if they knew where they might be saved was “on the computer.” Which was mildly funny to see them react when my face led to them saying “which I guess is beyond not helpful.” I eventually convinced him to freaking try signing into OneDrive like I had told him to do while I checked his local drive files. Which turns out it was not on the PC but in fact OneDrive. That was a much more straight forward moment. Microsoft tricking people into creating Microsoft Accounts and further tricking them into letting OneDrive replace “Documents”, “Desktop”, and “Pictures” local folders at setup is a nightmare when trying to help older folks (though even younger folks don’t even notice that they are actually making a Microsoft Account either). Which means if I just pull a drive out of a not booting computer those folders don’t exist in the User’s folder. And if the OneDrive folder is there, the data is mostly just stubs of actual files. Which means they are useless, and can be bad if the person only had a free account and it got too full and there is now data that may be lost due to those folders not “really” being present.

They know how to use these (to me) really complicated programs and media devices. They know how to automate things in cool ways. Create content or apps that I will just never wrap my mind around. So I am not over here calling them stupid and just “dunking” on them. But they don’t care or just refuse to learn the basic hardware or even basic level troubleshooting (a lot is just a quick Google search away). They know how to create things, but not ask how the stuff that they use to create things works. So what will happen when the folks that know how things work are gone and all people know is how to make things that presuppose that the other things are functioning? All because the only things that get attention are whatever is new and teaching less and less the foundations. Pair that with things being so messed up that “fake it till you make it” is a real and honest mantra and means only fools will give actual credentials on their resumes.

It is all about getting a title of a job, without knowing a damn thing about what is needed to do the job. It also means so many problems that were solved before are needing to be re-solved as if it was brand new. Or things that were already being done are “innovated” by people with good BS-ing skills in obtuse ways that sound great but just add lots of busy work. To which the next “innovator” just puts things back to before and are seen as “so masterful.” History and knowing how things work currently matter in making real advancements. If a coder just learns to always use functions or blobs of other projects without knowing what is in them. Then they could base basically everything on things that if are abandoned or purged will make their things no longer work.

Given how quickly “professionals” from so so many industries are just simply relying on these early AI/MLs without question. They don’t verify if the information they got was factually true and can be cited from real sources. Instead of seeing that the results were made from the AI/MLs doing shit they have been taught to do. Which is to try and create things based on the “vibe” of actual data. The image generators are all about the attempts to take random prompts and compare to actual versions of things and make something kind of similar. But the text based ones are treated so differently and taken at a scary level of face value and trusted. And it is getting worse with so many “trusted” media outlets beginning to use these systems to make articles.