[jmcqk6]

Credentials are a way to externalize trust. The trend with AI is to further erode trust. There will be a reaction against this eventually, and it's likely that more mechanisms to externalize trust will be found, not that they will become unimportant.

[erelong]

I think the problem is, compare credentials with reputation. A programmer who possesses no credentials might create "good" software that is validated as "good" even by those possessing credentials. However, a person with credentials related to programming, might produce malicious software that betrays the "trust" of the credential. Thus, just like the fallacy of the labor theory of value, credentials do not inherently relate to the production of heritable wealth. AI shines a light on this disconnect, and that actually the involuntary nature of certain credentials (as opposed perhaps to credentials themselves) creates certain classical impediments to the creation of wealth.

Thus, maybe credentials might be thought to be "necessary but insufficient" for achieving certain goals or validating trust. But even in this above example, the credential was not even necessary for the production of "good" software. AI of course simply exposes this truth as it gives more direct access to skills and knowledge to the average person: the (involuntary) credential was never necessary for doing some of these things, and we are able to remove the necessity entirely in some cases.

[jmcqk6]

It sounds like you have a particular bone to pick though you're only doing it by talking in generalities in the OP, and now you're talking about programming credentials.

I don't know of any required credential to write software or be a programmer.

When I think about credentials, I think about doctors and lawyers. In both cases, I'm going to demand that the people I work with are credentialed, and there is no way that I'm going to change that.

Can you give a specific example of something that requires a credential today that you would like to see relaxed?

[erelong]

It's mostly a problem with "requiring" the credentials by law

I have no problem with you wanting your doctors or lawyers to have credentials for your own needs

I take issue with people requiring me to seek doctors or lawyers with credentials, as that then has set up a compulsory system which reduces the quality and quantity of law and medicine produced, which has predictably created things like doctor shortages today (see news stories on doctor shortages)

So AI will fill some of these shortages if there aren't burdensome regulations put in place to prevent it from doing so (such as regulations that currently exist)