Declarative and procedural knowledge

A thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the idea of declarative vs procedural knowledge. In other words knowledge that something exists versus knowledge how it is done.

The feeling is that AI tools are removing the need for step-by-step procedures for most things. Knowing that queues and databases exist, that there’s a musical scale called phrygian, what camera body or film stock or shallow depth of field mean. The vocabulary and concepts themselves become more important than memorizing how to execute them.

Because once you know the vocabulary, AI can handle the procedure. You need to know phrygian exists to ask for it. You need to know what shallow depth of field is to request it. But memorizing the scale pattern or calculating the f-stop becomes optional.