Yes, there is a widespread belief in tech that 'removing friction' is a good direction to aim for. But you can have too little friction that completely ruins a product and the user experience.
In game design friction very important; remove all friction and you don't even have a game any more, you might as well show the You Win screen. My favourite metaphor for it is sex: there is no sex without friction.
What LLM have done is massively reduce the friction of intellectual effort, completely devaluing most expressions of it.
You have to get licensed to drive a car and there are rules. If you are caught breaking the rules you can be fined (or jailed if your rule breaking harms others enough). In extreme cases of rule breaking you can lose permission to drive the car.
This is all friction that is intended to make car-driving work at scale.
I don't think it inherently devalues it. But the mediocre baseline for it and how much it entices you to allow it to just spit out that mediocrity takes discipline I don't think everyone has. I've seen some lean in and keep their heads just fine. I've seen others lean in and become disillusioned.
Worst of all I've seen good engineers lean in and begin thinking uncritically and magically.
In game design friction very important; remove all friction and you don't even have a game any more, you might as well show the You Win screen. My favourite metaphor for it is sex: there is no sex without friction.
What LLM have done is massively reduce the friction of intellectual effort, completely devaluing most expressions of it.