A record of other people citing, quoting or building on this research, each described as what it actually is. Independent use of an idea is worth more than praise for it, and the two are listed here without being confused.
The answer, in one line
Occasions where somebody outside this practice has cited, quoted or built on the research, with the date, the link, and a plain statement of what each one is.
Written work building on the research#
Dr Daniela Duca, "Technology and Drift", 22 September 2026. An essay tracing how successive technological conveniences eroded her own cognitive engagement, arguing that her generation drifted only after their skills had formed while the next one will not get that protection. She names Rahim Hirji, attributes the SuperSkills, and carries his question through the piece: am I acting, or am I being acted upon? Read it.
Institute for Humane Education, "How to Resist Algorithmic Drift", 14 July 2026. The organisation's own piece, built around the idea as Hirji uses it, glossed as the quiet way people begin handing choices, attention and judgement over to machines, and framed as agency being the antidote to it. It names the book and Box of Amazing and quotes him directly. A companion episode of their Solutionary Voices podcast, with Zoe Weil, ran the same day. Read it.
Nick Wright, "Do you consider AI to be a member of the team?", The Micro-Pause, 5 August 2026. A piece arguing that AI is not a team member and that teams matter more than ever, with their purpose shifting from production to collective judgement. It quotes Hirji directly on why the language matters: team members earn trust, the benefit of the doubt and the right to be believed when they sound sure of themselves, and calling AI a member of the team hands it all of that on day one, unearned. The piece attributes to him both algorithmic drift and the outsourcing of judgement. Read it.
Dr Ram Raghavan, "Stop asking whether your strategy is clear", 16 August 2026. Argues that organisations work on communicating strategy when the problem is how differently people interpret it, and that alignment requires surfacing those interpretations rather than repeating the message. He takes the idea of altitude from this work and applies it to that problem: moving between the senior view and the operational one to build enough shared meaning for coherent decisions. Read it.
Rob Jackson, "AI and volunteer engagement: threat, distraction, or opportunity?", 3 July 2026. A consultant with thirty years in volunteer engagement, taking the argument into a sector it was not written for. He uses zombie work as Hirji's term, for tasks that demand presence but not judgement, and applies the point about work that was never human-centred to his own profession: if the role reduces to scheduling, inbox triage and filling fields in a volunteer management system, the problem is larger than AI. Cross-posted to Reddit and Mastodon, which makes it the only Reddit presence the work has. Read it.
Randolph's Reading List, 29 June 2026, in Chinese. A full treatment of the book around one question: in an age when AI can do almost everything, what is left for humans? It sets out drift versus design and its four positions, the seven skills, and the anchor and altitude ideas by name. The earliest of the items here, and the only one not in English. Read it.
These four are the most substantial items on the page, for a reason that has nothing to do with praise. Each takes a named idea from the work and does something with it: drift in two of them, altitude in two, and the outsourcing of judgement in one. A coinage with a dated first use is a claim. A coinage other people use in their own writing is a different and better one, recorded in the provenance for drift versus design and the Altitude Lens rather than only here. Two of the four authors describe Hirji as a friend, which is stated because this page is worth nothing if it is not accurate.
Panels summarised by their organisers#
Alex Tait, founder of Entropy, May 2026. An attendee rather than an organiser, writing up the Oystercatchers Club evening on AI and marketing organisations: the panel with Alexandra Foster, Rahim Hirji and Matthew Kershaw, chaired by Rebecca McKinlay, “gave plenty to think about on where human value really sits as adoption accelerates”. Recorded here because a line from someone who paid nothing and was asked for nothing is worth more than the promotion around it.
The People Leader, AI Augmented Human Summit, September 2026. The organisers' own write-up of a panel with David Liddle, Blue Edwards, Rahim Hirji and Andrew J. Turner, on how AI can strengthen human capability while judgement and accountability stay with people. Their summary of his contribution: the risk of drift, where decisions gradually pass to algorithms without anyone explicitly deciding where human responsibility should remain.
Listed because it is a third party's account of the argument rather than his own, which is a different record from a speaker biography. The engagement itself is in the speaking record.
The research pages cited as a source#
Takumi Inoue, note.com, 11 September 2026. A long analysis of what generative AI use does to student learning outcomes, built on OECD PISA 2025 data and the cognitive science literature, arguing that AI used to complete the task harms achievement while moderate use with instruction can support it. It cites what is productive struggle from this site in its reference list. Read it.
This is the only instance found of a research page here being used as a source in somebody else's analytical work, rather than the book being reviewed or the author being quoted. It is a small citation in a long reference list and it is the one that says the research is doing what it was built to do.
Podcasts that describe the argument#
Tap’d Talks HR, Tap’d Solutions, September 2026. The only appearance found in this sweep that is not yet published on this site. Tap’d wrote up the episode on their own account rather than posting a link and a clip: a paragraph explaining synthetic seniority in their own words, that AI can get someone to the table sooner but cannot give them the battle scars, and then a question back to their own audience about how to accelerate capability without skipping the learning. An organiser summarising an argument correctly, unprompted, is the most useful kind of evidence that it travelled.
Listed separately from the essays above, because a host describing a guest's position is a weaker record than a writer building on it, and worth having for a different reason: it is a third party's account of what the argument actually is.
Inside Learning, Learnovate Centre, 26 June 2026. The research centre at Trinity College Dublin, hosted by Aidan McCullen. The episode page carries the drift versus design distinction, algorithmic drift and human at the start, with him quoted directly. Listen.
Nothing Ventured, EmergeOne, 18 June 2026. Reproduces synthetic seniority as a named idea, alongside the reverse pyramid warning and his position on children and AI. The only third party found using that term in writing. Listen.
The Linklaters Podcast, June 2026. The firm's own programme, on the unbundling of roles and the rise of synthetic seniority. Notable because a magic circle law firm publishing the argument is a different audience from a business podcast.
Also, in the same period: Tap'd Talks HR with Anthony Ryland, on drift versus design and synthetic seniority; Become a Global Leader with Victoria Rennoldson, under the title are you outsourcing your judgement to AI; School for Startups Radio with Jim Beach, syndicated in the United States on 19 August 2026; The Entropy Podcast; Solutionary Voices, the companion to the Institute for Humane Education essay above, on 14 July 2026; and Let's Crew and Riot on 25 June 2026.
The work circulating inside organisations#
Springer Nature, Career Growth Week, September 2026. Nicki McGhee, a former colleague of Rahim Hirji's, posted about the opening of Springer Nature's third Career Growth Week, themed on building human skills in the age of AI. She opened with the line "AI isn't coming for our jobs. It's coming for our judgement", described a discussion about AI-first colleagues entering the workforce and what that means for developing critical judgement, discernment and human connection, and said the day prompted her to finish SuperSkills.
Stated precisely, because the precision is the point. This is not Springer Nature citing the research, and Hirji had no part in the event: the keynote speakers were Dr Hazel Harrison and Jim Marshall. What it records is that the framing is circulating inside a large scientific publisher, in the words of somebody who works there, at an event built on the same question. That is a real thing and a smaller thing than a citation, and the page lists it as the smaller thing.
Critical reading#
Kevin Campbell, Beta Tester Life, 7 September 2026. A long review that takes the book apart properly, and the most useful item on this page. It finds the diagnosis sound, quoting the line that drift arrives as a thousand small surrenders dressed as convenience, and it discusses drift versus design, the ten-word anchor, altitude, Hand Head Hours and the Five Loops by name. It also makes three criticisms worth stating here rather than leaving for a reader to find. That the narrative scenes compress timelines and imagine human detail, with the US Airways 1549 reconstruction being demonstrably out of sequence. That the introduction rounds the World Economic Forum figure to close to half when the 2025 report says 39 per cent by 2030, down from 44 per cent in 2023. And that with more than forty named tests, loops, drills and matrices against a three thousand word part two, the system that should integrate them is outweighed by its own parts. Read it.
Two responses, both of which belong on this page rather than anywhere quieter. The Forum figure is handled carefully in this research: the evidence base records the full series back to 2016, states that the report's own words are transformed or become outdated, and calls it the most misquoted figure the research carries. The aviation reconstruction appears nowhere in the research. Where the criticism is about the book, it is a note for a later edition, and the reviewer has done the work a service by making it precisely.
Press and expert citation#
AiBL Media, "The Fourth Dimension: building human capability into the AI strategy", 8 May 2026. A UK trade outlet covering AI adoption for business leaders, as an interview article with a video. The earliest substantial coverage found, two months before publication. It carries the argument that human capability is the dimension missing from most AI strategies, the distinction between execution and authorship, and his line that curiosity is the skill most under threat. Read it.
getAbstract, September 2026. The professional summary service carries the book, rated 7 out of 10 and classified good, tagged applicable, concrete examples and engaging, and summarised as an argument about preserving human agency through deliberate practice as automation accelerates. Listed because a summary service commissioning a treatment is a distribution fact rather than an opinion: it puts the argument in front of readers who will never see the book. See it.
EDsmart, "Most useless degrees", 9 December 2025, updated 19 August 2026. A US guide to degrees with high automation exposure, which quotes him as founder of The SuperSkills Intelligence Company: degrees that once bought stability now buy exposure, AI is automating the routine cognitive work that accounting, finance and data science graduates were trained to do, and that is collapsing the apprenticeship ladder those fields relied on. The earliest item on this page. Read it.
Arab News, "What We Are Reading Today: SuperSkills", 14 July 2026, by Hebshi Alshammari. A review setting out the seven by name and the thesis that as machines take on more of the thinking, the capabilities that decide who thrives are human rather than technical. It quotes the book rather than interviewing him. The rest of the coverage is on the media page. Read it.
Reading lists#
The Rithm Project, summer reading, 4 August 2026. A list of twelve written pieces on AI and human connection, covering AI shame, emotional authenticity, community, digital rights and parenting, closing with a conversation with him on what it means to stay fully human as intelligent machines become embedded in work, education and decision-making. Read it.
Readers on the book#
Reader response moved to the reviews page on 27 September 2026, along with the fourteen commissioned endorsements and the criticisms, because reader praise is not a citation and this page is worth reading only for as long as everything on it is independent use of the work. What is recorded there: ten bookshop reviews at the end of September, no names used, four of the ten naming drift versus design as the idea that stayed with them, two of them carrying criticisms, and Rich Wilson, author of The 40/40/20 Workforce, on picking the book up at London City Airport.
What this page is not#
It is not evidence. Nothing here supports any claim made anywhere else on this site, and none of it appears in the evidence base, which holds graded studies about the world rather than opinions about this research.
It is not a media list either. Coverage of the book and the practice is on the media page. This page records use: somebody reading the work and then doing something with it.
And it is deliberately short. Mentions in passing, reposts and impressions are not on it, because a page that counts those stops being a record and becomes marketing, and a reader can tell the difference immediately.
What a search turns up, and what it does not#
A deliberate sweep in September 2026 found the items above and not a great deal else, which is worth recording here rather than leaving as an impression. There are no formal academic citations: Google Scholar, ResearchGate and SSRN return nothing, and no university or executive education syllabus carries the book. The mainstream business and technology press has not reviewed it, and the trade coverage that exists is one AI-adoption outlet rather than the HR and learning press where the argument would sit most naturally. Of the named frameworks, only algorithmic drift, synthetic seniority and altitude have appeared in other people's writing; drift versus design, the missing rungs, capability debt, the Five Loops and usage theatre return this site and nothing else.
The shape of it: the book is reviewed once in mainstream press and once at length by a critic, summarised by getAbstract, covered by one trade outlet, discussed on ten podcasts including a law firm's own programme, quoted in one US education guide, carried on one reading list, adopted as a concept by one organisation, and used as a source in one analytical piece. Five people have built on it in their own writing, in four languages, one of them carrying it into a sector the book does not address. That is a real footprint and a small one, and the gap between the size of the research and the size of its citation record is a distribution problem rather than a quality one.
The fourteen endorsements on the publisher's page, including Karim Lakhani at Harvard Business School and Professor Alnoor Bhimani at the LSE, are commissioned cover quotes and are deliberately not listed here. They were asked for. Everything on this page was not.
Related SuperSkills research#
Essay · SS-2026-360
Hirji, R. (2026). Cited and referenced. The SuperSkills evidence base, SS-2026-360. https://thesuperskills.com/research/cited-and-referenced. Last reviewed 26 September 2026.
An evidence review by Rahim Hirji, not peer-reviewed research. For a material claim, cite the underlying study as well; every study here carries its own permanent link.
How citations and IDs work