>> and those tasks were never just tasks. They were the mechanism that built judgment, intuition, and the ability to supervise the systems we now delegate to AI. >Bullshit. The busywork wasn't being done by low level engineers to train them up, they were doing it because it needed doing, it was undesirable, and they were lowest on the totem pole.

Why not both? It was work that needed doing AND it taught people to be better engineers.