We aren’t just talking about technology, we are talking about knowledge.
Like I said, I have zero issue being “AI first”. 90% of my day-to-day is using AI. But the part I objected to in the OP was “we don’t need to know things because we have AI” (to paraphrase. So I was asking the question: what if AI goes away?
I agree humans are resilient. But that’a not a good excuse for complacency.
I think open weights and local AI will distribute the knowledge across the planet, avoiding a single point of failure. All you would need is electricity and a computer. And if we have no way to access it, there will always be enough people who either have sufficient knowledge already or the hunger to rediscover things.