I would suggest that any person who uses AI will atrophy their compositional skills unless they specifically take care to preserve those skills.

I could have sworn there was research that stated the more you use these tools the quicker your skills degrade, which honestly feels accurate to me and why I've started reading more technical books again.

Not until large-N research is done without sponsorship, support, or veiled threats from AI companies.

At which point, if the evidence turns out to be negative, it will be considered invalid because no model less recent than November 2027 is worth using for anything. If the evidence turns out to be slightly positive, it will be hailed as the next educational paradigm shift and AI training will be part of unemployment settlements.

We DEEPLY do not.

That's not, IMO, a "skills go down" position. It's respecting that this is a bigger maybe than anyone in living memory has encountered.

Let me add a single data point.

> is likely to improve at what they do

personally, my skills are not improving.

professionally, my output is increased

Clearly this means Anthropic believes this but would be nice to have a footnote pointing to research backing this claim.

I would even say it's likely the opposite. My output as a programmer is now much higher than before, but I am losing my programming skills with each use of claude code.

People who use AI mindfully and actively can possibly improve.

The olden days of buidling skills and competencies are largely dying or dead when the skills and competencies are changing faster than skills and competency training ever intended to.