Does the Generative AI Era Really Demand New Human Skills?

Regarding the title, I feel that while we have acquired abilities that are unnecessary for humanity, no truly new, essential abilities have actually emerged. What do you all think?

Of course, the skill to leverage AI is necessary, but the skill to use AI itself is merely an extension of existing IT skills. It does not require a new capability.

Below is the commonly cited V-model, comparing personnel by layer before and after the introduction of AI.

I don't necessarily believe the V-model is the absolute truth, and I'll put aside my desire to critique it for now... I just hope it conveys that with the introduction of generative AI, certain layers will be replaced by AI.

At the boundary between humans and AI, we need to use AI harnesses like Claude Code or Codex CLI to give instructions to AI in text.

There are two important things here:

1. Giving instructions in text is no different from before.
2. Just because your implementation tasks are taken away doesn't mean you can necessarily shift to 'upstream' work.

Giving instructions in text is no different from before

This is particularly prominent in companies like SIers, where there is a requirement to write out detailed specifications during the requirements definition and design phases.

Requesting work from downstream teams based on those documents was something that happened even before the generative AI era.

Well, I suppose there were parts where documentation was insufficient and we relied on verbal explanation, so perhaps more detailed instructions are now required for generative AI, but essentially, nothing has changed.

Just because your implementation tasks are taken away doesn't mean you can necessarily shift to 'upstream' work

Roughly speaking, these are the abilities required for upstream processes:

• The psychic ability to dig out 'what the customer truly wanted'
• The logical thinking ability to break down requirements into specific specs, architecture, and design
• The verbalization ability to communicate those accurately, and so on.

However, these were abilities that the people who were already in charge of those tasks possessed; they are not newly required for humanity.

Looking at it individually, there may be new skills required, but on a human-level perspective, I don't think new abilities are being demanded.

Conversely, I think the current generative AI is definitely not AGI.

Conclusion

At least for now, I've shared my thoughts on how no new abilities are required of humanity.

Incidentally, for software development on a scale exceeding 'software that can be built by Vibe Coding,' I think it will be difficult to increase total social productivity because, in the end, humans in the upstream process will become the bottleneck.

After all, those who have been playing an active role primarily in implementation were doing so because they either didn't want to do upstream work or lacked the ability to do so...

So, that's it for this time! See you next time.