Are robots stealing our right to create and reproduce? Do you want to remain human?

In an era of accelerating technological convenience, humans are quietly losing fundamental skills, not always through outright prohibition, but through systems that make creation and reproduction increasingly unnecessary, discouraged, or outsourced.

The phenomenon is often called "deskilling: the gradual erosion of abilities once considered essential to human competence and independence. Automation, artificial intelligence, and hyper-specialized tools handle tasks so efficiently that people no longer practice or even learn them. What begins as labour-saving innovation ends up as atrophy of human capability.

This isn’t convenience, it’s control. 

Consider everyday examples. Navigation once demanded spatial reasoning, memory of landmarks, ordnance survey maps that most found difficult to read, and mental mapping; now GPS handles it so flawlessly that many drivers struggle to find their way without turn-by-turn instructions. But how many times has GPS let you down or taken you down the wrong route. 

Handwriting and letter-writing have all but vanished as typing and instant messaging dominate communication. Abbreviations and emoji’s replace words and expressive writing, 

Creative work, writing essays, composing music, generating art, theatre and dance all face similar pressure from AI assistants that produce polished outputs in seconds, reducing the need for humans to wrestle with drafts, revise ideas, or develop original voices. AI generated images replacing humans. Studies show heavy reliance on these tools correlates with weaker critical thinking, shallower problem-solving, and diminished independent judgment.

Translated that means overriding the brain as more rely on IT to do it for them. 

The pattern extends beyond cognition to physical and practical domains. Home cooking from scratch competes with meal-kit deliveries, dark kitchens  and ultra-processed foods engineered for convenience.

Basic repair skills and fixing appliances, sewing clothes, or maintaining vehicles have declined. Why would you repair something when a replacement will be cheaper and faster. Even in professions like medicine and aviation, over-dependence on diagnostic algorithms, AI and automation and autopilot systems, risks eroding the tactile, experiential knowledge that experts once built through repetition and deliberate practice. It was called ‘skills’. 

This isn't merely convenience; it's a structural shift. Modern economies reward speed, scalability, and standardisation over slow, idiosyncratic human mastery. When AI can instantly reproduce images, text, code, or designs that once required years of training, the incentive to acquire those skills weakens. Why invest thousands of hours learning to draw, write, or reason deeply if a prompt can approximate the result? The result is a society where fewer people know how to truly create from scratch or reproduce knowledge through their own effort.

Talking of reproduction, it doesn’t just stop at knowledge. Human reproduction is in decline. Are humans now not even going to be able to reproduce. Are we to rely on artificial wombs and genetically modified babies devoid of parents moving forward. Who has heard of ‘alloparenting’? A life without parents. 

The deeper cost is existential. Skills aren't just tools for tasks; they shape character and resilience. The struggle of trial and error, the satisfaction of mastery, the ability to improvise when systems fail, forge independence and adaptability. When we outsource too much, we risk becoming editors of machine output rather than originators; consumers rather than makers. In extreme scenarios, full dependence could leave societies brittle and vulnerable when technology falters or access is restricted.

Technology should enhance our skills, not remove them.  The question isn't whether we can let machines take over creation and reproduction. It’s whether we can stop it. To remain human we have to go back to doing things ourselves. Do you want to remain human?