Where did this budget appear?

Reading about “The death of web development education” and how many creators really struggle because no one is consuming web dev education anymore sucks. In a recent project I was told to use more AI and that 50€ a day should be enough. Requesting budget for education, to buy a book and spend some time to learn, to become a better and faster developer in the future, always required quite some discussions. Seeing these budgets blown out for AI with the argumentation that it makes one faster, I wonder: where did this budget appear? Where was this when we all tried to learn something? Commanding an AI agent does not make one learn about the topics. It is a short term speed up without building knowledge for the long term.