As for making things, curtains. They're not hard because they're rectangular, and mainly just need cutting and hemming, but the result is sizes and materials that would require buying something custom made.

I'd say this is the case in times of technological stability as well.

Education has always been based on heuristics: Teach A, B, and C, with the hope that people will gain X, Y, and Z. Avoid P, Q, and R. The suspicion that some forms of education are fructifying, and others are stultifying, are largely a matter of guesswork and social bias. Attempts to clear things up with "studies" tends to produce results on a par with pseudoscience. Our biases are all we've got.

The reaction to AI isn't the first time that parents have had to decide on the merits of educational technologies: Radio, TV, the early Internet, social media, etc. Even books. There was certainly a suspicion that TV and social media caused brain rot, or a related issue, moral rot.

Regarding your comment below, I was born in the 60s, and was certainly educated for the web era. I'm more adept with technology today, including AI, than most people half my age.

My children were required to learn Microsoft Office in elementary school, "for their careers."

Disclosure: My education was funded by NSF, and I now work for a company that sells stuff for government funded research, though not exclusively.

What I mean is more centralized oversight over research priorities, metric-driven rewards, and preference for political favorites?

The number of people entering graduate study in physics never went down, so the academic career pipeline was flooded with talent. You had to be a research superstar to get a faculty job. I wasn't.

Meanwhile, physics had never really laid out a reliable path into industry. Getting an industry job involved a fair amount of luck. Many physics students became programmers. My first job after grad school was for a company owned by a relative of a fellow grad student, and my ancillary skills in programming and electronics have helped lubricate my resume as needed.

A friend of mine asked me if I was optimistic about AI. I told him, it depends on who owns it. If the people own it, I'm optimistic. If the oligarchs own it, I'm pessimistic.

American teachers were horrified by this idea when I was a kid. But the Suzuki method has been successful, and I think it has raised the level of playing overall. Many famous musicians self-identify a "Suzuki kids." On the other hand, many of them admit to not being the strongest readers, but reading takes practice. You can also pick up repertoire by following the sheet music while listening to a recording. Like many skills, it fades if it isn't used. I'm fortunate to be a fluent sight-reader, but not a virtuoso.

In my view the notation is what it is. Changing it would be hard. "Standard" notation creates a kind of symbiosis between composers and players. If a composer uses a nonstandard notation, nobody will play their stuff. And the standardization is why musicians can learn the skill of reading.

Styling works against us too. The ability to control the geometry of the light beam improves with the size of the optics relative to the emitter, but people want a car with sexy little lights.

I designed optics for lighting in a past life, though never for an automotive application. This issue is actually on my radar because of the blinding brightness of bike lights on the local bike paths.

NIMBYism is not just a matter of wanting to preserve exorbitant land values, but a knowledge that every square foot of land and gallon of water is in demand by nefarious people who are not revealing their actual intentions.

Meanwhile the people in those departments are working balls to the wall in permanent crisis mode to meet real business needs.

I live near a major university, and a lot of my friends and relatives are academics, including adminstrators. I was an adjunct teacher for a semester, long ago.

In contrast, most careless driving habits don't actually get anybody to their destination any quicker.