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AI isn't a skill yet, just as computers weren't a skill when people started buying PCs in the 1970s. New technologies produce new skills for some people but most people are Users at some level which may or may not require skills, yet they create more work. A washing machine as a new technology a century ago required skills to mass-produce them, but the housewife, while having a new convenience, didn't get any new real skills. Laundry was still a chore that took time away from other things she might want to do. Computers were different in that they produced new skills at the hardware level: one could build a computer from scratch. The people who had those skills also could use software more easily, and perhaps could also create it. The same thing is happening now with AI, but it's all at the coding and software levels. Now that software mostly runs in a browser we're disabused of having to install it and be trained on how to use it. We can learn things by interacting online, and search for answers through chatbots. AI is doing the same thing in that they didn't have the effect of creating new skills at the level of a person making them and not producing any rigorous skills--just as washing machines didn't. We're disabused of the manual "washboard" and "ringer" aspects, and hanging clothes on a line. Like the housewife who got her first washing machine in the 1940s or 1950s, could do other things that might interest her like reading novels or engaging with what was culturally significant at the time, perhaps watching TV or talking on the telephone. AI would be seen as useful to some people if it were more like a washing machine: simply making things simpler and using the saved time to become skillful at something else, even if useless. The important thing is to have skills and use (work at) them every day. Play may result in unique skills, but will require work to cultivate them. The problem is that conveniences steer us away from skill. The housewife in the 1950s may have had unique skills but they went to seed by watching TV and talking on the telephone.