Deskilling is not necessarily a bad thing, if what you refer to as skills are mundane things that should be automated. I do agree with the author in that people are becoming lazy when it comes to critical thinking and evaluating the decisions or work that AI presents to them. These are people who have little passion to do what they do, and for whom their role is primarily a chore.

I don't think this is as black and white. You skill up by spending time with the domain. Of course, you learn better when you are involved in situations or jobs that actually matter. But getting rid of all the "mundane" distances you from the nitty-gritty and you lose that feel for the problem.

I think that's one reason - another reason is that people are time-constrained, backlogged and expected to do more than ever.

Yes. I bet it was really fun debugging punch card computers.

Also, skills can be re-acquired, if needed. People are acting like it's the end of the world for them, like their knowledge will become impossible to understand anymore. I'm not as fast at solving equations as I was in high school, but I still understand the logic behind it.

We will adapt just fine, like we did before.

Agreed. I think there's also an argument to be made that it's upskilling non SREs to now be able to do SRE things.