Are Automated Skills Really Advancing Your Hard Skills?

Are these gamified motivators and automations actually advancing your skills at all? I'm really not sure where I stand on this anymore, if I'm honest. There's no doubt that when you automate something as simple as looking up a foreign word in a paper dictionary, it is quite time consuming and tedious. But when a web or a mobile app reminds you that you're starting to forget a word,  it starts to remove the need to self-assess. It replaces a certain amount of responsibility with convenience. So, I'm becoming more and more convinced that these kinds of conveniences may be detrimental,. At the very least an illusion of progress, a waste of time,