The problem is people don't always make the wise decision. Evidence: the junk food industry is alive and kicking.

Some people will disconnect from devices, but others may just say "this is the way things are now" and adjust themselves to the flavor of junk content.

Just because it can be used by non-experts to create crappy written work, it can also be used by people who work with it to augment and improve their existing writen work.

To my mind AI is a general purpose technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_technology

I guess using this mental model, what you are worried about is the equivilent to pollution?

Did the printing press also increase the amount of crap in circulation?

I think the answer is, undoubtedly, yes.

Both of these are fascinating questions and, to me anyway, both can be answered with yes. The sheer amount of writing increased exponentially once more people could read, write and publish their own writings ( and internet only exacerbated this trend ). I accordance with pareto principle, most of it was of poor quality, but the upside was that good output likely did increase in terms of absolute number as well ( few people are bound to write something decent ).

I think parent is looking back at history and reasonably infers potential results ( more crap ).