90% of My Skills Are Now Worth $0
Kent Beck argues that AI has devalued 90% of traditional skills while giving the remaining 10% a 1000x leverage boost.
Key Ideas
The 90/10 Split
Beck divides professional capabilities into two categories. Ninety percent of traditional skills—like wordsmithing, code formatting, and routine problem-solving—have lost their economic value because AI can replicate them efficiently. The remaining ten percent gain massive leverage through AI augmentation. The question becomes: which skills fall into that valuable ten percent?
Cost Collapse Creates New Possibilities
Technological revolutions follow a pattern: they dramatically lower costs for previously expensive services, then discover novel applications for these now-cheap capabilities. Beck illustrates this with ChatGPT writing a rap about Test Desiderata—creative work he wouldn't have attempted without AI assistance. Cheap text generation opens doors to experiments that once seemed frivolous.
Growth Rate Over Absolute Quality
Skeptics dismiss current AI as "mediocre," but Beck counters that revolution depends on improvement velocity, not present capability. AI systems advance faster than human skill development. Today's rough edges smooth out; today's human advantages erode.
Actionable Takeaways
- Train models on your own work — Feed AI your past writing, code, and decisions to create personalized assistants
- Experiment broadly — Test AI across tasks you'd normally skip, looking for unexpected wins
- Identify your 10% — Figure out which skills remain irreplaceable and double down on them
Notable Quotes
"The differential value of being better at putting words in a row just dropped to nothing." — Kent Beck
References
Connects to what-silicon-valley-gets-wrong-about-ai on the tech industry's AI perspective.