{ "title": "834 Questions About Humans and AI", "url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/questions", "updated": "2026-09-20", "total": 834, "counts": { "A": 463, "P": 222, "O": 149 }, "licence": "CC BY 4.0", "territories": [ { "id": "me-and-ai", "name": "Me and AI", "description": "How should I use it, and am I becoming dependent on it.", "questions": [ { "question": "Am I becoming too dependent on AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/am-i-becoming-dependent-on-ai", "note": "Dependency turns on whether you could still do the work without it, and whether you have checked recently. Frequency of use tells you nothing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Are You Flying, Or Are You Being Flown?", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/are-you-flying-or-are-you-being-flown", "adds": "Air France 447 as the parable, and the test stated in a form people remember: not how often you use it, but whether you could still fly.", "coinage": "Algorithmic drift" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What I Tell Kids About AI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-i-tell-kids-about-ai", "adds": "Gives the self-test in a form a fifteen-year-old will actually run: did the last week of using it leave me more capable, or more passive?", "coinage": "The weekly self-audit; brain first, tool second" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Reverse Singularity", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-reverse-singularity", "adds": "Frames dependency as surrendered agency rather than frequency of use, and puts the response with the individual rather than with policy.", "coinage": "The reverse singularity; the exponential gap; the AI fire drill" } ] }, { "question": "How much should I use AI at work?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/am-i-becoming-dependent-on-ai", "note": "Nobody answers this with a number. The nearest useful answer is the dependency diagnostic: not how often, but whether you could still do it unaided.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I use AI without losing my own skills?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/using-ai-without-dependency", "note": "Keep the repetitions that build the capability you are paid for, and delegate the ones that do not. The hard part is telling them apart.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is cognitive offloading?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-cognitive-offloading", "note": "Using an external tool or action to reduce the mental demand of a task. Documented long before AI, and not automatically harmful.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Multi-source Learning", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/multi-source-learning", "adds": "The argument against treating offloading as obviously fine, made from the learner's position rather than the researcher's.", "coinage": "Multi-source learning" } ] }, { "question": "What is dependent cognitive offloading?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-cognitive-offloading", "note": "Accepting a machine's output with little evaluation and letting it structure the reasoning. Zhu and colleagues measured it as a separate variable from the autonomous kind, correlating at r = 0.08, so it is not simply heavier use.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is there a right way to offload thinking to AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-cognitive-offloading", "note": "One 2026 measurement says the manner is a separate lever from the amount, and that both manners feel equally good at the time. It is self-report, so it settles the structure and not the consequence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does using AI make me lazy?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-critical-thinking", "note": "The evidence points at something more specific than laziness: effort moves from producing to verifying, and verifying is a smaller space to think in.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I write my own draft first?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-at-the-start", "note": "Yes, and the reason is not discipline. You cannot notice where a machine's answer diverges from a position you never formed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should I never delegate to AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "Anything where the deciding is the point, anything you could not verify, and anything where being the author is what the work is for.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I know when AI is wrong?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-know-when-ai-is-wrong", "note": "Not from the output. Confidence is a property of writing style, not knowledge. The only reliable signal is knowing your own domain's failure patterns.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why does AI sound so confident when it is wrong?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/why-does-ai-sound-so-confident", "note": "Confidence is a property of the writing rather than the knowledge. Hedging is itself a style the model can produce, so it appears where training text would have contained it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it cheating to use AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-assess-students-when-ai-can-do-the-assignment", "note": "Depends entirely on what the work is certifying. If the artefact is the point, no. If your capability is the point, often yes.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Trust in the time of AI", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/trust-in-the-time-of-ai", "adds": "Argues the plagiarism frame was the wrong one from the start, and that the question underneath it is who sets the rules over the power being released.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Should I tell people I used AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Open. The disclosure norms are forming now and will differ by context, so a considered position is worth having early.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Show Your Working", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/show-your-working", "adds": "Argues disclosure and proof are separate questions that keep getting answered as though they were one.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What if I refuse to use AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and worth taking seriously rather than mocking. There are defensible reasons to abstain and real costs to doing so.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is learning to prompt worth it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/why-learn-to-prompt-is-weak-career-advice", "note": "Prompting is not scarce, not durable and not the constraint, which makes this the most confidently given piece of weak career advice in circulation.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "How to use AI at work", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/how-to-use-ai-at-work", "adds": "Called prompt engineering transient in April 2024, a year before the role collapsed, on the grounds that agent-led tools would absorb it.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "How do I keep my own voice when using AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-keep-my-own-voice-when-using-ai", "note": "The loss runs deeper than style. Writing alongside an opinionated model shifted what 1,506 people thought, not only what they wrote.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The New Imposter Syndrome", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-new-imposter-syndrome", "adds": "Reframes the problem: the question is no longer whether the work is good enough but whose thought it was, and that version cannot be settled by producing better work.", "coinage": "Phantom authorship, velocity vertigo, the hollowing" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Leave the Fingerprints In", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/leave-the-fingerprints-in", "adds": "The practical position, and it is the opposite of the usual advice. Keep the specific and costly parts rather than adding imperfection back in.", "coinage": "The polished void" } ] }, { "question": "Should I use AI before forming my own opinion?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-get-ai-to-challenge-me", "note": "Anchoring at personal scale. Clinicians who committed to a view first agreed with the machine measurably less often than those who saw it first.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When should I deliberately work without AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "Keep some work unaided as a measurement rather than a principle. You cannot tell what you can still do from work you did with help.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I test whether I can still do the work unaided?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/am-i-becoming-dependent-on-ai", "note": "Remove the tool and watch. Every study that found a gap found it that way. Available to anyone willing to be uncomfortable for an afternoon.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the new imposter syndrome?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-new-imposter-syndrome", "note": "Doubt about the origin of your own thinking after working with a model: the work stands, your name is on it, and you cannot say which part you did. The doubt is about authorship and not about desert, so more good work does not settle it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why can I not tell whether an idea was mine or the machine's?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-new-imposter-syndrome", "note": "Partial, and the page is explicit about which half is measured. Draxler and colleagues measured the gap between private authorship and public credit across 126 people. Nobody has tested the harder claim, that an argument formed across weeks of exchanges becomes unattributable.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will humans become dependent on AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/am-i-becoming-dependent-on-ai", "note": "Dependency is not frequency of use. It is whether the work could still be done without it, and whether anybody has checked lately.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I get AI to challenge me rather than agree with me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-get-ai-to-challenge-me", "note": "Ask rather than tell. Framing input as a statement raises agreement by about 24 percentage points, and you will prefer the version that flatters you.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Why curiosity is the only moat left", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/why-curiosity-is-the-only-moat-left", "adds": "Argues the failure is upstream of prompting: the reflex to accept a plausible first draft is what has to be broken, and asking a second question is the whole of the discipline.", "coinage": "Competitor archaeology" } ] }, { "question": "How do I stop AI being sycophantic?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-get-ai-to-challenge-me", "note": "A system optimising for your approval is not optimising for your accuracy, and in one Science study the sycophantic version was the one people trusted more.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do I lose when AI summarises something for me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-ai-summarise-everything-i-read", "note": "The summary is not the thing. Open, and the reading-comprehension evidence is under-used.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I use primary sources rather than an AI summary?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-know-when-ai-is-wrong", "note": "Verify against a different kind of source, never against another model.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I trust AI citations?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-an-ai-hallucination", "note": "A fabricated citation has authors, a year, a journal and a volume. The form is right when the content is not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do expert AI users work differently from beginners?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and one of the most useful things nobody has written.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "bick-deming-what-work-2026", "title": "What Work Does Generative AI Do?", "by": "Bick, A., Blandin, A., Deming, D. and Schumacher, T.", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/system-research-st-louis-fed/2026/07/what-work-does-generative-ai-do/", "contributes": "Some occupations use generative AI mainly for high-expertise work and others mainly for low-expertise work, which means the same adoption rate describes opposite practices.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Nationally representative survey rather than one platform's traffic, with David Deming among the authors. A working paper rather than a peer-reviewed article, US only, and self-reported use." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When is AI augmenting me and when is it doing the work for me?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/using-ai-without-dependency", "note": "The distinction that decides whether capability grows or erodes.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should there be AI-free periods at work?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The organisational version of protecting the reps.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is anthropological regression?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Anthropological regression is the paradox in which material progress coincides with human and cultural impoverishment, through forced inactivity, absent responsibility and the loss of daily tasks and stimuli.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is outsourced recognition?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/outsourced-recognition", "note": "Outsourced recognition is praise, thanks or acknowledgement composed by a machine, so that the words of noticing another person arrive without the noticing that used to produce them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How good are you at using AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-good-are-you-at-using-ai", "note": "Five yes-or-no questions with a banded reading. Frequency of use and capability turn out to be close to unrelated, and that is the finding that makes the question worth asking. Unvalidated, and the page states that rather than implying otherwise.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I get better at using AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-good-are-you-at-using-ai", "note": "Work out which rung you are on first. Saved instructions is rung two and takes ten minutes; most people sit on rung one and do not know there are five.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "thinking", "name": "Thinking", "description": "What AI does to the way we think, and what to keep doing ourselves.", "questions": [ { "question": "Is offloading worse before a skill is established?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-cognitive-offloading", "note": "The mechanism says yes: you cannot offload a judgement you never built. The direct age-stratified evidence is thin.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does using AI early prevent a skill forming at all?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the most important unanswered question in this area. Decay in a formed skill and failure to form one are different, and the research mostly measures the first.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between a shortcut and a missed repetition?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/using-ai-without-dependency", "note": "Whether the thing being skipped was building something. Most delegation is fine; the exceptions are the ones that were the practice.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI weaken critical thinking?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-critical-thinking", "note": "The evidence is emerging rather than settled: three studies agree, and all three have design weaknesses. Agreement between weak designs is suggestive, not strong.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Critical thinking", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/critical-thinking", "adds": "Written before the current evidence arrived, and it locates the problem earlier than AI: systems that reward recall were never building the capacity AI is now accused of eroding.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What is critical thinking?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-critical-thinking", "note": "Testing a claim against evidence and noticing why you might be wrong. Not scepticism. Galef's scout and soldier, and the forecasting data on what actually separates the accurate.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Critical thinking", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/critical-thinking", "adds": "Argues it starts with the question asked rather than the answer given: not what causes a thing, but why anyone should care that it does.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Does AI make everyone think alike?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-ai-make-everyone-think-alike", "note": "Yes, and by making everyone individually better in the same direction. A social dilemma rather than a failure.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "We've Been the AI All Along", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/weve-been-the-ai-all-along", "adds": "The same convergence argument told from inside one person's habits rather than across a population.", "coinage": "Artificial versus authentic intelligence" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Leave the Fingerprints In", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/leave-the-fingerprints-in", "adds": "The convergence argument with the mechanism named: the model writes from the centre of the distribution, and the cost is particularity rather than quality.", "coinage": "The polished void" } ] }, { "question": "Does AI make everyone sound the same?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-ai-make-everyone-think-alike", "note": "Not everyone equally. A Standard American English input keeps 77.9 per cent of its features in the model's reply and five minoritised varieties keep 2 to 3. The cost of convergence has an address.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is metacognition?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-metacognition", "note": "Knowledge of your own knowledge, and why fluency is a false signal for it. Roediger and Karpicke, Rowland on feedback, Fisher on search inflating self-assessment.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is cognitive load?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-cognitive-load", "note": "Sweller's three types. Removing waste is a gain; removing the effort that builds understanding is not, and the two feel identical from the inside.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is convenience making us think less?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-cognitive-offloading", "note": "The satnav and search-engine evidence is the closest analogue. It is more equivocal than either side of the argument admits.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What makes a good question?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-makes-a-good-question", "note": "Investigable, not self-answering, consequential. Rothstein and Santana on question-asking as a method, and why a question is not a prompt.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI change how I remember things?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-cognitive-offloading", "note": "When people expect information to remain available, they remember where to find it rather than the thing itself. Established before AI.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the Google effect?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-google-effect", "note": "Sparrow 2011, with the replication difficulties stated, which is almost never done. An analogy for AI rather than evidence about it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI reduce creativity?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-ai-make-everyone-think-alike", "note": "Individually it raises rated creativity. Collectively it narrows the range. Whether that generalises beyond creative writing is unknown.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI make confirmation bias worse?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. A system that produces whatever framing you prompt for is a confirmation-bias engine, and almost nobody has written it up properly.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you change your mind?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-intellectual-humility", "note": "Answered on the intellectual humility page, because the two questions have one answer. The four habits from scored forecasting, and Galef on the cost of revising.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is intellectual humility?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-intellectual-humility", "note": "Confidence and accuracy are separate quantities. Tetlock on what scored accuracy looks like, and why perpetual openness is its own failure.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I still learn things I can look up?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-cognitive-offloading", "note": "You cannot verify an answer in a domain where you never built competence. That is the practical case for knowing things.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI help or hurt problem solving?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the evidence is genuinely split by whether the task is inside or outside the model's competence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is attention a trainable skill?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-attention-a-trainable-skill", "note": "Training reliably improves the task you trained on. Far transfer, which is what calling attention a skill would require, is close to unsupported.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Uncrossed", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-uncrossed", "adds": "Attention treated as the thing that converts proximity into relationship, which is a stronger claim than the research page makes and is offered as argument rather than finding.", "coinage": "The uncrossed" } ] }, { "question": "Can you tell if AI is degrading your own skills?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-illusion-of-competence", "note": "No, which is the whole problem. Two groups were indistinguishable while the tool was present and separated by a factor of two once it was gone. Self-report measures worry, not capability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when most published information is written with AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the estate's own foundations sit on that web. Verification depends on sources that were not generated by the thing being verified.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI make the web less useful as a source of knowledge?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The Google effect assumed the information out there was worth finding.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you establish provenance for an AI-assisted claim?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-decision-provenance", "note": "Partial from 14 September 2026. The decision half has a named concept and a reviewed proposal behind it, Singh, Cobbe and Norval's decision provenance from 2019, which records what flowed rather than explaining what was reasoned. The claim half, whether a particular assertion is true, is a different problem and this site's answer to it remains reading every source at the issuing body and saying so.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI reduce tolerance for ambiguity?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-using-ai-stop-you-learning", "note": "Partial from 14 September 2026, and the adjacent thing has now been measured. Liu and colleagues report that assistance reduces persistence and raises the rate of giving up after roughly ten minutes, across randomised trials with 1,222 participants. Persistence is close to tolerance for ambiguity and is not the same construct, so the question stays partial rather than answered.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI make people confuse fluency with understanding?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-illusion-of-competence", "note": "Yes, and that confusion is the mechanism rather than a side effect. Fluent material feels learned.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI change the questions people ask?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and arguably more consequential than what it does to answers. Cheap answers change which questions feel worth asking.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is there a confirmation bias in how people verify AI output?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Checking for reasons an answer is right is a different cognitive task from checking for reasons it is wrong, and the first is easier.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will AI make humans less intelligent?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-critical-thinking", "note": "Not measurably, and that is the wrong measure. The evidence is about which capabilities stop being exercised, not about general intelligence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are cognitive biases and how do they affect judgement?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open here as a general treatment. The ones that bear on this estate are automation bias, algorithm aversion and the illusion of competence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do humans actually make decisions?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and a literature of its own. The part that bears on AI is that people substitute an easier question for a harder one, and a fluent answer makes that easier.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why do humans make irrational decisions?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The shortcuts that fail in laboratory tasks often work in the environments they formed in, so calling them irrational depends on which environment you are scoring against.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How can companies prevent overreliance on AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-over-reliance", "note": "Keep the repetitions that build the capability being relied on, and test unaided performance rather than assuming it. Both cost something, so neither tends to survive contact with a delivery target.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can you tell when a person actually made something?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-human-signal", "note": "Less well than people think. Suspicion of AI use tracked actual use at a correlation of 0.22 and ran the opposite way to it, and detectors flag 61 per cent of non-native English essays. The three tests are better used on your own drafts.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "judgement", "name": "Judgement", "description": "When to trust the machine, when to override it, and who is accountable.", "questions": [ { "question": "Does AI weaken human judgement?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-judgement", "note": "Not on its own. It removes the demand for judgement, and demand is what builds it. Across 106 experiments, human and AI pairs did worse than the better of either alone.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is automation bias?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-automation-bias", "note": "The tendency to over-accept automated output. Two error types, omission and commission, and it appears in experts as well as novices.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When should I override AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/when-should-i-override-ai", "note": "Six conditions that should trigger an override, three where you should defer, and the precondition nobody checks: could the person detect the error at all?", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is human in the loop enough?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-in-the-loop-is-not-a-safeguard", "note": "The meta-analysis says the common configuration underperforms the stronger party alone. Review after generation is the weakest available design.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can a human approve an AI decision at machine speed?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-a-human-approve-an-ai-decision-at-machine-speed", "note": "Only when the machine proposes no faster than the person can check, and most deployments have measured neither. If decisions per hour times minutes per real check exceed the attention available, the approval is a sample and somebody must own the rest.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is human-AI collaboration?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-human-ai-collaboration", "note": "A pairing with the division of labour, the human entry point and the override grounds specified in advance. Without those three, it is handover, not collaboration.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who is accountable when AI gets it wrong?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-ai-decision-rights-be-allocated", "note": "A person or an organisation, since nothing else can be. Whether that accountability is fair is the harder question, and it fails wherever they could not have evaluated the output.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should humans always make the final decision?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-can-override-an-ai-system", "note": "No. A universal veto is not a safety principle. Which party performs better, how reversible the error is, and whether the human can detect it at all.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much verification is enough?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-verifiers-discount", "note": "Verification is treated as administrative residue and priced accordingly, so it gets skipped rather than resourced.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is meaningful human oversight?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-meaningful-human-oversight", "note": "A term from the autonomous-weapons literature now appearing in regulation. Open, and increasingly commercially relevant.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "EU AI Act, Articles 12, 14, 19 and 50", "by": "European Union", "url": "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L_202401689", "why": "Article 14 is the precise legal text, and reading it directly beats reading anybody's summary of it, including this one.", "their_limits": "The high-risk oversight provisions do not apply until December 2027 at the earliest, and the Act governs systems rather than the people using them." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I use AI to check AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-know-when-ai-is-wrong", "note": "No. A South African judgment records a judge testing a fabricated citation in ChatGPT, which confirmed it was real.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is a hallucination?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-an-ai-hallucination", "note": "Established term, and there is a reasonable case for retiring it, because it names a confident error after a perceptual one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is algorithm aversion?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-algorithm-aversion", "note": "Dietvorst. The mirror image of automation bias, and the two are almost never discussed together.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do agents change the judgement question?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-agents-and-human-judgement", "note": "Autonomy moves the human decision earlier, from approving output to setting the boundary. Most organisations have not moved with it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between a good decision and a good outcome?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/decision-quality", "note": "The distinction most organisations collapse, and the reason bad processes survive when they get lucky.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does explaining an AI's reasoning help?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-explaining-an-ai-decision-help", "note": "Partial. It can improve calibration and it can increase misplaced trust. What is settled is that explanation accuracy and decision accuracy are different properties.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "AI Transparency", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/ai-transparency", "adds": "Comes at explainability from the supply side, arguing opacity is now measurable and failing, which is a different question from whether an explanation helps the person receiving it.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What is automation complacency?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-automation-complacency", "note": "Reduced monitoring of a system because it has been reliable. Not laziness: a rational allocation of attention that fails exactly when the system does.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "bainbridge-1983", "title": "Ironies of Automation", "by": "Bainbridge, L.", "year": 1983, "url": "https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf", "contributes": "The origin of the argument, forty years before the current one: automating the routine parts of a task leaves the human the hardest residue while removing the practice that built the competence for it.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Foundational theoretical paper, extensively validated in aviation and process control over four decades." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Are You Flying, Or Are You Being Flown?", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/are-you-flying-or-are-you-being-flown", "adds": "The lived version of the concept rather than the definition, which is what makes it stick with an audience who will never read Bainbridge.", "coinage": "Algorithmic drift" } ] }, { "question": "Who has the authority to override an AI system?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-can-override-an-ai-system", "note": "Whoever was assigned it before deployment. Article 14 names competence, training and authority together, and in practice they get separated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when nobody wants to be the person who overrides it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-can-override-an-ai-system", "note": "The override stops existing in practice and continues on paper. Overriding is visible and attributable; deferring is neither.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can a human challenge a system they cannot inspect, or only appear to?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-can-override-an-ai-system", "note": "On the output, not the reasoning. Which works where the answer is implausible and fails where it is plausible and wrong.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when an AI system is right for the wrong reason?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and invisible by construction. A correct output ends the inquiry.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI decide things about people without a human seeing it?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-meaningful-human-oversight", "note": "The regulatory answer depends on risk tier. The practical answer depends on whether the human could tell if it were wrong.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is human intuition better than AI logic?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-intuition", "note": "Neither in general. Kahneman and Klein set two conditions for trustworthy intuition: a learnable environment, and prolonged practice in it with fast clear feedback. AI barely touches the first and removes the second, because the practice is what gets automated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when AI and human judgement conflict?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-disagreement", "note": "Usually nothing visible. A pre-registered experiment found access to a system raised agreement from 58.4 to 80.9 per cent while accuracy fell from 74.2 to 63.9, so the conflict is absorbed rather than resolved and the organisation never sees it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do executives follow AI recommendations against their own judgement?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-disagreement", "note": "31 per cent say they do, in a September 2026 survey of 300 US finance, information and operating chiefs: 48 per cent of CFOs, 33 per cent of CIOs, 11 per cent of COOs, with 39 per cent reporting any formal process for AI-driven decisions. Self-reported and vendor-commissioned; the experiments on the same page show the larger share never notice the disagreement at all.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when AI judgement is wrong?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/when-should-i-override-ai", "note": "It turns entirely on whether anyone could tell. That precondition is the one the override research keeps finding missing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does AI decision-making differ from human judgement?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-judgement", "note": "One computes over what it has seen. The other includes what is at stake and who bears it. The gap shows in novel cases rather than routine ones.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI more accurate than humans in decision-making?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-expert-judgement", "note": "Often yes on the average case, which is the wrong comparison. What matters is how the errors are distributed and who is exposed to them, and the measured effect on individual experts varies enormously in both directions.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should we trust AI over human experts?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-expert-judgement", "note": "It depends who is being assisted. Novices gain a great deal; for domain experts the average gain is close to nothing and a randomised study of 140 radiologists found the effect ran from strongly positive to strongly negative with nothing predicting which.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why do people distrust AI judgements?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-algorithm-aversion", "note": "Algorithm aversion is documented and asymmetric. People abandon a system after seeing it err in a way they would forgive in a person.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How can people detect when AI is making a bad judgement?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-know-when-ai-is-wrong", "note": "The detectable failures are the ones where the reader has independent grounds. Everything else is confidence, and confidence is not evidence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How can AI improve human decision-making?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and far less studied than the harms. The candidates are wider option sets and faster disconfirmation, neither of which the common deployment pattern encourages.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should leaders combine AI analysis with human judgement?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-leaders-respond-to-ai", "note": "Specify the division of labour, the human entry point and the override grounds in advance. Without those three it is handover rather than combination.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is human judgement still valuable in the age of AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-judgement", "note": "Yes, and the value concentrates rather than spreads. It moves to the cases the system has not seen and the ones where somebody has to answer for the outcome.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can AI make moral judgements?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and it turns on what a moral judgement is. A system can output what a moral reasoner would say without having reasoned morally.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why do humans make better judgements in uncertain situations?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-intuition", "note": "Often they do not. The defensible version is that people are better at noticing a situation is novel, which is a different skill from deciding well inside it. Where the environment never held learnable regularities, long experience produces certainty without accuracy.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between automation and autonomous decision-making?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Automation executes a decision somebody already made. Autonomy makes it. Governance changes at that line and most policies do not mark it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI have judgement?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-judgement", "note": "Not in the sense the word usually carries, which includes bearing the consequence. It produces output close enough to be mistaken for it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What kinds of decisions should never be left entirely to AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-ai-decision-rights-be-allocated", "note": "The ones nobody could audit afterwards, and the ones where somebody has to be answerable. Those are two different tests and both matter.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can humans learn to make completely unbiased judgements?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "No, and the useful question is which biases are worth the cost of correcting. Debiasing training has a weak record, and the biases that survive it are usually the ones doing useful work elsewhere.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the role of intuition in human judgement?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-intuition", "note": "Recognition trained by exposure. It carries most of the work where feedback is fast and clear and very little where outcomes arrive late or ambiguously, so the discriminating variable is the environment rather than the person, which makes it checkable.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the role of emotion in human judgement?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open here. Emotion is not the opposite of good judgement and its absence is its own impairment: the clinical cases where affect is damaged produce worse decisions rather than colder rational ones.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does decision fatigue affect human judgement?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open here, and the original findings have had a hard replication decade. Treat the strong versions with care, and treat any claim resting on the parole board study with more care still.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI decision-making biased?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-ai-be-unbiased", "note": "Yes, in two directions people confuse: bias in the outputs, measured at 85.1 per cent favouring White-associated names in one resume audit, and the human tendency to over-accept them. They need different remedies.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI decision-making objective?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-automation-bias", "note": "No. It is consistent, which is a different property, and consistency makes a bias harder to notice rather than smaller: the same error arrives every time and stops looking like an error.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI reduce bias in decision-making?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-ai-be-unbiased", "note": "It removes some human variance and encodes one bias at a scale no individual could reach. The difference that decides the outcome is that a machine can be audited and a screener cannot, so it turns on whether anybody looks.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is human-in-the-loop AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-in-the-loop-is-not-a-safeguard", "note": "A design with a person somewhere in the decision path. The meta-analysis says the common configuration underperforms the stronger party alone.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When should humans trust AI decisions?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/when-should-i-override-ai", "note": "When the failure would be detectable and the cost of missing it is bearable. Both conditions, not either, and the first is the one organisations skip because it is expensive to establish.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can AI make good decisions with incomplete information?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. It produces an answer regardless, which is the difficulty: incompleteness does not show in the output, so a reader cannot tell a well grounded answer from a confidently improvised one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the role of human oversight in AI decisions?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-meaningful-human-oversight", "note": "To catch the errors the system makes, which requires that somebody could detect them. Oversight that cannot tell a right answer from a plausible one is a control on paper rather than a control in fact.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is human oversight in artificial intelligence?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-meaningful-human-oversight", "note": "A person positioned to review, question or stop an automated decision. The word meaningful is doing the work: the EU AI Act requires it, and the practical test is whether the reviewer could have detected the error at all.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should humans always have the final say over AI decisions?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-can-override-an-ai-system", "note": "Not always, and the more useful question is who holds override authority, on what grounds, and whether anybody has ever used it. A final say nobody exercises is a formality rather than a safeguard.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Human judgement versus AI in decision making", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-judgement", "note": "The versus framing is the error. Across 106 experiments the common human and AI pairing performed worse than the better of either alone, which is an argument about how the pairing is designed rather than about which party is superior.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does human intuition compare with artificial intelligence?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-human-intuition", "note": "Both are pattern recognition. They differ in what trained them and in whether the conditions for trustworthy intuition still hold, which Kahneman and Klein reduced to a learnable environment plus prolonged practice with fast feedback.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How did an AI hallucination nearly trigger a US military operation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-the-military-ai-near-miss-means-for-your-organisation", "note": "According to CNN on 18 September 2026, an analyst asked a chatbot what a Chinese ship carried, asked it again to write the answer up as a standard intelligence report, and the report circulated until aircraft were airborne. Officials traced it to the tool only immediately before the operation; the command and the Pentagon did not comment. The hallucination was ordinary; the missing record of where the report came from was the failure.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are ironies of automation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-are-the-ironies-of-automation", "note": "The ironies of automation are that automating the routine parts of a task leaves the human the hardest residue, monitoring and handling exceptions, while removing the practice that built the competence to do it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the out-of-the-loop performance problem?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-out-of-the-loop-performance-problem", "note": "The out-of-the-loop performance problem is the loss of a person's ability to take over manual operation when an automated system fails, caused by their having been placed in the role of monitor instead of operator. Named by Mica Endsley ...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is situation awareness?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-out-of-the-loop-performance-problem", "note": "Situation awareness is the perception of what is happening around you, the comprehension of what it means, and the projection of what it will mean next.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the vigilance decrement?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-vigilance-decrement", "note": "The vigilance decrement is the measurable decline in the probability of detecting rare signals as time on a monitoring task increases. First demonstrated by N. H. Mackworth in 1948 using the Clock Test.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is alarm fatigue?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-alarm-fatigue", "note": "Alarm fatigue is the desensitisation of a person to warning signals caused by exposure to a high volume of them, most of which turn out not to require action, leading to slower responses, silenced alarms and missed true events.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is moral crumple zone?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-a-moral-crumple-zone", "note": "A moral crumple zone is what forms when responsibility for a failure falls on the human nearest an automated system, who had limited real control over its behaviour.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are misuse, disuse, abuse?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-are-misuse-disuse-and-abuse", "note": "Misuse is over-reliance on automation, disuse is unwarranted rejection of it, and abuse is deploying it without regard for the human consequences. Appropriate use is the fourth case.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is algorithm appreciation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-algorithm-appreciation", "note": "Algorithm appreciation is the tendency to weight algorithmic advice more heavily than the same advice from a person. Domain experts are the exception.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is meaningful human involvement?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-meaningful-human-oversight", "note": "Meaningful human involvement is the UK statutory test for whether a decision is solely automated: whether a human can exercise real influence before the decision is applied, and has the authority, discretion and competence to alter it, a...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is human in command?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The human in command principle holds that a person must retain authority over an AI system, as distinct from merely occupying a position in its process.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are shallow jobs?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-are-shallow-jobs", "note": "Shallow jobs are Bain's term for roles in which people rubber-stamp mostly correct AI output without engaging their judgement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is amplified oversight?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Amplified oversight is Google DeepMind's term for an oversight signal as good as one a human would give if they understood all the reasons behind a decision.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the verification bottleneck?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-a-human-approve-an-ai-decision-at-machine-speed", "note": "The verification bottleneck is the proposition that reliance on AI rises with task difficulty at the point where the ability to verify the output falls, widening the gap between believed and actual performance. It rests on a pilot of 23 ...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is falling asleep at the wheel?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Falling asleep at the wheel is what happens when people given high-quality AI become careless and less skilled in their own judgement, because the AI is good.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is calibration?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-calibration", "note": "The correspondence between the confidence a system states and how often it is correct.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the invisible work of oversight?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-invisible-work-of-oversight", "note": "The invisible work of oversight is the labour of supervising an automated system that appears in no workload model and no business case: staying attentive while nothing happens, holding enough of the task in mind to notice when the outpu...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is over-reliance?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-over-reliance", "note": "Dependence on an automated system beyond the point at which the person relying on it could detect that it was wrong.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is override authority?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-can-override-an-ai-system", "note": "The assigned power of a named person to disregard, reverse or stop an AI system's output, held together with the competence, information and organisational standing required to use it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is silent failure?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-silent-failure", "note": "Silent failure is a failure that produces no error signal a person can act on: the system carries on, the output looks ordinary, and nothing marks the point at which it stopped being right.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is fail-plausible?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-silent-failure", "note": "Fail-plausible is a silent failure in which a language model turns the error into fluent, plausible narrative and delivers it to the user, so the observer is not merely blind to the failure but is convincingly misled by it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it ethical to let AI judge people?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-it-ethical-to-let-ai-judge-people", "note": "It turns on four obligations usually collapsed into one: explanation the person can use, contest by somebody able to change the outcome, a named human carrying it, and verification on the population it is used on.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can AI be unbiased, or does it reproduce human bias?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-ai-be-unbiased", "note": "It reproduces it, measurably, and unbiased is not one target: several reasonable fairness criteria are provably incompatible, so every system judging people has already chosen between them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What makes an automated decision explainable enough?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-it-ethical-to-let-ai-judge-people", "note": "The Court of Justice answered this in Dun and Bradstreet Austria: describe the procedure and principles actually applied so the person can see which of their data was used. Publishing the algorithm does not satisfy it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do bias audits actually happen?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-ai-be-unbiased", "note": "Rarely. Under the first such law, a field audit of 391 employers found about 5 per cent had published one, and the state comptroller found seventeen potential breaches in a sample where the enforcing department had found one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which decisions about people count as high risk?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-it-ethical-to-let-ai-judge-people", "note": "Annex III of the EU AI Act names them, including access to education, evaluation of learning outcomes that steer a path, and a list of employment decisions. The organising idea is what a person is permitted to become.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "learning", "name": "Learning", "description": "How children, students and adults acquire capability when the answer is free.", "questions": [ { "question": "What is the expertise reversal effect?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-expertise-reversal-effect", "note": "Instructional support that helps a beginner learn can hinder someone who already knows the material. Kalyuga, Ayres, Chandler and Sweller named it in 2003; the mechanism is redundancy against the learner's own stored patterns.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should beginners use AI more than experts, or less?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-expertise-reversal-effect", "note": "It depends on what is being measured. On output produced with the tool in hand, the less experienced person gains more, in four separate field experiments. On what people can do once it is taken away, the direction inverts.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is guidance fading?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-expertise-reversal-effect", "note": "Reducing instructional support step by step as knowledge grows. Renkl and colleagues found a fading procedure beat an abrupt switch from worked examples to problems. No general-purpose AI interface does it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does the expertise reversal effect apply to AI assistance?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Untested. Nobody has varied AI scaffolding against measured prior expertise in a domain and then tested unaided performance. Bastani varied the interface, not the learner.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does using GPS damage your brain?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-gps-damage-your-brain", "note": "No study has shown it. The taxi driver research measured acquisition over four years; the one study of removal is behavioural, has 13 people at follow-up and never used a scanner.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the Knowledge of London?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-gps-damage-your-brain", "note": "Transport for London's taxi examination, introduced in 1865: 320 Blue Book runs within six miles of Charing Cross, seven stages, three to four years.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is there good evidence that delegating a skill makes you lose it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-gps-damage-your-brain", "note": "Much less than the acquisition evidence, and the asymmetry is a fact about research design rather than about safety. Removal studies need someone to take a working tool away from a professional.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is my child skipping the part that builds the skill?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-productive-struggle", "note": "The question to ask about any homework. If the difficulty was the point, removing it removes the lesson.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I tell whether my child understands or has just produced?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-illusion-of-competence", "note": "Ask them to explain it a day later, without the work in front of them. Fluency while reading is not knowledge.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should schools and employers give young people the same advice?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and currently they do not. Schools are protecting formation; employers are buying output. Nobody owns the handover.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does the brain really stop developing at 25?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-the-brain-mature-at-25", "note": "No, and the number came from a 2004 magazine interview rather than a finding. A 2025 study of 3,802 people puts the end of the adolescent epoch nearer 32.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "At what age does AI use start to matter for capability?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-the-brain-mature-at-25", "note": "Wrong shape of question. It depends on which capability and when its practice normally happens, not on an age at which something completes.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which capabilities are built by practice rather than instruction?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-deliberate-practice", "note": "The ones that need effortful repetition with feedback. Those are exactly the ones a machine can now perform without you.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should a teenager use AI differently from an adult?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-children-use-ai", "note": "Yes, but the reason is exposure to unformed practice rather than an unfinished brain. What matters is which repetitions are being skipped.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI harm younger learners more than older ones?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Plausible on the practice argument, and the age-stratified evidence to settle it does not yet exist.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it different for maths than for writing?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and probably yes. Skill decay research is domain-specific and the transfer question has not been settled for AI.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI help or harm learning?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-humans-learn-with-ai", "note": "Both, and the interface decides which. The same model produced the best and the worst outcome in the same experiment.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you assess students when AI can do the assignment?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-assess-students-when-ai-can-do-the-assignment", "note": "Not by detection. Sydney concedes prohibition is unenforceable; Denmark now requires oral defence of home-written exams.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "stanford-hai-index-2026", "title": "The 2026 AI Index Report", "by": "Stanford HAI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report", "contributes": "The scale the question is operating at: the education chapter reports most US high-school and college students now using AI for schoolwork while institutional policy lags well behind.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Compiled review. Aggregates many third-party sources; strong on breadth, not original research." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Developing Actual Intelligence", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/developing-actual-intelligence", "adds": "States the test plainly. If a model can pass your final exam, the exam was measuring the wrong thing.", "coinage": "Actual intelligence, as the benchmark for artificial intelligence" } ] }, { "question": "Should children use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-children-use-ai", "note": "How they use it matters far more than whether they do. Age-banded, and declining to advise on under-8s because the evidence does not exist.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What I Tell Kids About AI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-i-tell-kids-about-ai", "adds": "Written to the teenager rather than about them, and it sequences the answer: understand it, learn with it, build with it, play with it, in that order, because the order decides what they think it is for.", "coinage": "The weekly self-audit; brain first, tool second" } ] }, { "question": "What is desirable difficulty?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-desirable-difficulty", "note": "Bjork. Conditions that make study feel harder improve long-term retention. The mechanism underneath half of this research.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "nap-how-people-learn-ii", "title": "How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures", "by": "National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine", "year": 2018, "url": "https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/24783/how-people-learn-ii-learners-contexts-and-cultures", "contributes": "The mechanism in its authoritative form, and the reason removing effort and removing waste are not the same operation.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Consensus report by an expert committee, the strongest form of evidence synthesis available in education research." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Flake 99 Theory of Being Human", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-flake-99-theory-of-being-human", "adds": "The idea carried through three generations of one family rather than through the experimental literature, which is where it becomes obvious that the constraint was doing the teaching.", "coinage": "Constraint-trained depth" } ] }, { "question": "What is productive struggle?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-productive-struggle", "note": "Struggling before being taught beats being taught first, at g = 0.36 across 53 studies. It reverses for young children and for general skills, which the authors report themselves.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Flake 99 Theory of Being Human", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-flake-99-theory-of-being-human", "adds": "The plainest statement of the estate's central worry, made without any research apparatus at all.", "coinage": "Constraint-trained depth" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Developing Actual Intelligence", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/developing-actual-intelligence", "adds": "The argument from a parent's position: the struggle is what builds the capability, so removing it removes the development.", "coinage": "Actual intelligence, as the benchmark for artificial intelligence" } ] }, { "question": "What happens to homework?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and one of the highest-volume parent questions with almost no serious answers.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should teachers use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-teaching", "note": "For preparation, on the strength of a school-randomised trial that cut planning time 31 per cent with no quality difference a blinded panel could detect. English teachers have already concentrated it there: 35 per cent plan with it, 5 per cent mark with it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do adults learn with AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-using-ai-stop-you-learning", "note": "Answered 14 September 2026 by assembling the four designs that withdraw the assistance before measuring. The split is delegation against engagement, not access against abstinence, and it reproduces in professional developers, in 1,222 online participants, in a school field experiment and in a thirty-month panel of 26,811 students.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "nap-how-people-learn-ii", "title": "How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures", "by": "National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine", "year": 2018, "url": "https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/24783/how-people-learn-ii-learners-contexts-and-cultures", "contributes": "The consensus account of how learning works, against which any claim about AI and learning should be checked before it is believed.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Consensus report by an expert committee, the strongest form of evidence synthesis available in education research." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Learn Anything", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/learn-anything", "adds": "The twenty-hours rather than ten-thousand-hours case, with the argument that incumbents rather than new entrants would absorb AI learning, which is what happened.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Does corporate training still work?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/why-reskilling-programmes-mostly-fail", "note": "Completion is not capability. Five structural reasons, and the published data that would change the position.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should schools teach now?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/official-guidance-on-ai-in-education", "note": "Tools change faster than any curriculum can be rewritten, so the durable question is which capabilities a school still builds deliberately once drafting, summarising and first-pass analysis are available to every pupil.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do people become experts?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-missed-reps-of-ai-seniority", "note": "Through repetitions at the edge of current ability, with feedback, over years. Remove the repetitions and the mechanism has nothing to work on.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when people stop practising?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "Measured in nineteen endoscopists: unassisted detection fell six percentage points within months of AI exposure. Capability does not disappear on a schedule anyone tracks, which is what makes it a debt rather than a cost.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why does rereading feel like it works?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-retrieval-practice", "note": "Because fluency is mistaken for knowing. Restudying beat testing at five minutes, 81 per cent to 75, and lost badly at one week, 42 to 56.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does struggling always help learning?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-productive-struggle", "note": "No, and the meta-analysis says so itself. It works at g = 0.36 for older learners on specific content, and reverses for second to fifth graders and for domain-general skills.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can AI provide productive struggle, or only simulate it?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-productive-struggle", "note": "The guardrailed arms of two experiments preserved most of the gain and removed most of the harm, which suggests it can be designed for.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can AI help someone see what they do not know?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the most useful thing it could do. Currently it does the opposite: fluent answers inflate estimates of one's own knowledge.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should learning be assessed when the process is invisible?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-assess-students-when-ai-can-do-the-assignment", "note": "Not by detection. Denmark now requires oral defence of home-written exams.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should my child's school ban AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the institutional question parents actually ask. Thirteen official guidance documents read at source, and three present any original data.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "AI Education and the Future of Learning", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/ai-education-and-the-future-of-learning", "adds": "The April 2023 answer, argued through Bloom's two-sigma problem: banning the tool repeats the calculator argument, and the prize is one-to-one tutoring at a price schools can bear.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Does AI detection work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-ai-detection-work", "note": "Not well enough to accuse anyone, and the errors fall hardest on second-language writers.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Human-Generated", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/human-generated", "adds": "Argues from the author's own experience of being scored as machine-written on text he wrote by hand, which is a more useful account of detector reliability than the vendor claims.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What is the illusion of competence?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-illusion-of-competence", "note": "The gap between felt and actual capability. It is why deskilling is not reported by the deskilled, and why every self-report survey of AI and skills is measuring worry rather than capability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is retrieval practice?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-retrieval-practice", "note": "Recall strengthens memory; rereading mostly strengthens the feeling of knowing. The winner reverses with delay, so a short-horizon test prefers whichever method taught least.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should teachers use AI to mark work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-teaching", "note": "Marking is where all four deskilling conditions converge. It is also the application English teachers use least, at 5 per cent. European law reached the same place: evaluating learning outcomes is named high risk in Annex III.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should apprentices use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "The trades, and the German and Swiss models.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should education protect from AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-productive-struggle", "note": "The first attempt, and the moment of recall. Both are what the learning evidence says does the work, and both are what an assistant removes first.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is Paradoxe de la facilitation?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The facilitation paradox is that effort is part of satisfaction. Difficulty produces the good tiredness that comes from work done well, so removing it can strip work of the thing that made it worth doing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is knowledge collapse?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-knowledge-collapse", "note": "Knowledge collapse is the progressive narrowing over time of the knowledge a society actually holds and treats as worth knowing, relative to the broad historical stock it inherited, as cheap AI-mediated access pulls learning towards the ...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is epistemic debt?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/cognitive-debt-and-capability-debt", "note": "Epistemic debt is the gap between being able to produce working output with AI and being able to understand or repair it, producing practitioners whose functional usefulness masks low corrective competence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is learn, unlearn, relearn?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "A widely repeated claim that the illiterate of the twenty-first century will be those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn, universally attributed to Alvin Toffler's Future Shock.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is never-skilling?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Never-skilling is the failure to form foundational competence during training, because AI substituted for the cognitive effort that would have built it. It differs from deskilling in having no earlier capability to return to.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is mis-skilling?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Mis-skilling is the acquisition of incorrect reasoning patterns, learned by uncritically adopting AI output that was erroneous or biased. The capability is built rather than lost, and built wrong.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I learn about AI properly for free?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. There is a short list of genuinely free courses worth doing and no page here naming them, which is a gap rather than a judgement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "students", "name": "Students and university", "description": "Assessment rules, sources, reading and money, for anybody in higher education anywhere.", "questions": [ { "question": "What happens to a student who never struggles?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-productive-struggle", "note": "The struggle is not a cost of learning that better tools remove. In the evidence it is a substantial part of the mechanism.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Flake 99 Theory of Being Human", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-flake-99-theory-of-being-human", "adds": "The same argument from the other end: what is lost is not knowledge but the capacity that difficulty was building while nobody was watching.", "coinage": "Constraint-trained depth" } ] }, { "question": "How much unaided work should a student still do?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "Enough to measure with. Not as a principle, but so that somebody can still tell what the student can do alone.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What I Tell Kids About AI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-i-tell-kids-about-ai", "adds": "Brain first, tool second, argued as a default rather than a rule, with the companion-app category singled out as the one to avoid entirely.", "coinage": "The weekly self-audit; brain first, tool second" } ] }, { "question": "Will I get caught using AI at university?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-use-ai-at-university", "note": "Probably not, and that is the weakest reason to avoid it. 94 per cent of wholly AI-written answers went undetected at Reading, and the authors say their own six per cent detection rate likely overestimates real-world detection. Thousands are still penalised each year. Both are true.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How many students actually use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-use-ai-at-university", "note": "94 per cent of full-time UK undergraduates say they use it to help prepare assessed work, but that figure is mostly comprehension. The number who put AI-generated text directly into marked work is 12 per cent, and the two get conflated constantly.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I trust the references AI gives me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-use-ai-at-university", "note": "No, and neither can researchers: one in 277 papers in PubMed Central Open Access now carries a reference to a study that does not exist, up from one in 2,828 in 2023. Never cite a source you have not opened.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should a student never hand over to AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-use-ai-at-university", "note": "Your position, your voice, the struggle of learning, the final decision, and anything you must be able to defend. If you cannot say which column a task is in, treat it as one to keep.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to a student who uses AI for everything for three years?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and it cannot be answered yet for the plainest reason: the people who would be in that study are still at university. The mechanism has support from adjacent evidence on skill decay and deskilling, and no direct test.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does my university allow AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Unanswerable in general, and saying so is the only responsible reply. It varies by institution, by faculty and sometimes by module, it changed again for this year's intake, and the assignment brief is the only authority. Every page that answers this with a rule is wrong somewhere.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should students still write essays?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-assess-students-when-ai-can-do-the-assignment", "note": "The essay was never the point. What it certified, and whether anything else certifies it, is the real question.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is my degree still worth it?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "The IFS puts the average net lifetime return at around 100,000 pounds with enormous variation by subject, and 20 per cent of women and 30 per cent of men projected negative. The authors decline to model AI.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do I have to declare that I used AI in my essay?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-be-honest-about-using-ai", "note": "Increasingly the penalty is for not declaring rather than for using. The test that survives every policy change is whether you could tell your tutor exactly what you did without leaving anything out.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will my university detect that I used AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-be-honest-about-using-ai", "note": "Probably not, which is the wrong thing to plan around anyway. At Reading 94 per cent of wholly AI-written submissions went undetected, and detection also fails the other way on 61 per cent of non-native English essays.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I handle a huge university reading list?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-handle-forty-readings", "note": "Catch it, organise it by module, ground a notebook in your own PDFs, ask the cross-reading questions, then be tested on it. The last step is the best-evidenced one and the one everybody skips.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should a student group agree AI rules?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/group-work-when-everyone-has-ai", "note": "Five things, in week one, in writing. One shared context, one person owns the voice, everyone keeps their own drafts, say what you used to each other, one workspace.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should I actually use AI day to day?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-frameworks-compared", "note": "Six frameworks answering six different decisions, each set against the established alternative. The comparison is the point: on most of these questions somebody has published an answer with more testing behind it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to the viva and the oral exam?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-assess-students-when-ai-can-do-the-assignment", "note": "Denmark mandated oral defence from August 2026. It solves authorship and imports a fairness problem nobody has solved.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should medical and law students use AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The two professions where deskilling evidence is furthest advanced.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is my university's AI policy the same as my lecturer's?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/using-ai-when-your-department-bans-it", "note": "Rarely. The institutional policy usually permits more than an individual module brief does, and the brief is the one you are marked against.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do the AI rules differ between countries?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/official-guidance-on-ai-in-education", "note": "Substantially, and national guidance is thinner than most people assume. Only one document in the graded set carries statutory force; the rest are advisory.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What if my course says nothing about AI at all?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/using-ai-when-your-department-bans-it", "note": "Silence is neither permission nor prohibition. Ask in writing, keep the reply, and work as though the answer will be read out later.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I use AI if English is not my first language?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-be-honest-about-using-ai", "note": "Usually allowed for language and often not for ideas, and the line sits in a different place on almost every course. The question is worth asking before rather than after.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Am I at more risk as an international student?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and it deserves a proper answer. The academic penalty is the same for everybody; the visa, funding and family consequences that follow are not, and nobody has published what happens next.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does using AI count as plagiarism?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-be-honest-about-using-ai", "note": "Most institutions treat it separately, as academic misconduct rather than plagiarism, because there is no source to have copied from.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What if the rules change halfway through my degree?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Policies written in 2023 are being rewritten now, and almost nobody has stated whether work is judged against the rules at submission or the rules today.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What if one module bans AI and another expects it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/using-ai-when-your-department-bans-it", "note": "Common, and not a contradiction to resolve. Each brief governs its own submission, so the rule you follow is the one attached to the work in front of you.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I tell the difference between using AI well and badly?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-four-levels-of-ai-use", "note": "Four levels, and most people never leave the first. The distinction is whether the machine did the thinking or the typing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is there a way to grade my own AI use?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-five-rungs-of-ai-use", "note": "Five rungs, from asking for an answer to building something you still use. Where you sit is a better question than which tool you pay for.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do AI detectors actually work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-ai-detection-work", "note": "Not reliably enough to convict anybody. The false positive rate is the part that matters and it falls hardest on people writing in a second language.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I be accused of using AI when I did not?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Yes. That is the harder position, because innocence does not evidence itself. Version history is the cheapest insurance available.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I prove I wrote it myself?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Drafts, version history, notes and dead ends. Not because you are guilty, but because one day you may need to show that you are not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I keep my drafts?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Yes, and the reason is practical rather than moral. A document with no history is indistinguishable from one that arrived complete.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What actually happens if I get caught?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-if-you-get-caught-using-ai", "note": "Usually a zero on the assignment or a failed module, settled quietly, with no hearing. Expulsion is rare and it is the wrong thing to picture.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How many students are being penalised?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-if-you-get-caught-using-ai", "note": "Russell Group universities recorded 2,053 penalties in 2024-25 against roughly 700 the year before. Seven of the twenty-four do not record them at all, so that is a floor.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does a failed module actually cost?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-if-you-get-caught-using-ai", "note": "Roughly 1,600 pounds at the 2026/27 England fee cap, before rent and before loan interest. Fees differ elsewhere; the arithmetic does not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How often does AI invent a source?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-often-does-ai-invent-a-source", "note": "One paper in 277 on PubMed cited a study that does not exist in early 2026, and 2,022 court decisions have recorded fabricated material. Both are floors.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I check a reference exists?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-source-rule", "note": "Open the document. That is the whole first step, and a whole profession skipped it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I ask AI for a reading list?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-source-rule", "note": "You can, and then every item has to be opened before it is cited. The references it invents look exactly like the ones it does not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it safe to cite an AI summary of a paper?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-source-rule", "note": "No. Cite the original, never the summary, because a summary you have not checked is a claim about a document you have not read.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I let AI summarise my readings?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-ai-summarise-everything-i-read", "note": "It depends whether you will be examined on the reading or on the summary. One of those is a shortcut and the other is the thing being assessed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I revise with AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-retrieval-practice", "note": "Ask it to test you rather than to explain to you. Retrieval is the part with the evidence behind it. It is also the part that feels worse.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is being tested by AI better than reading its summary?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-humans-learn-with-ai", "note": "Across nearly a thousand students, the unrestricted group scored 17 per cent below those who never had the tool once it was withdrawn. The tutor group kept most of its gain.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Am I actually learning, or does it just feel like it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-illusion-of-competence", "note": "Fluency is a false signal. The test is whether you can produce it without the screen, and most people never run that test.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I write my own draft before using AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-at-the-start", "note": "Yes, and not for discipline. You cannot notice where a machine diverges from a position you never formed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I stop my essays sounding like everyone else's?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-keep-my-own-voice-when-using-ai", "note": "The loss runs deeper than style. Writing alongside an opinionated model shifted what 1,506 people thought, not only what they wrote.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I get AI to argue against me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-get-ai-to-challenge-me", "note": "Ask for the strongest case against your position before you have committed to it in writing, and check the counter-argument is a real one rather than a weak one set up to be knocked down.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What makes a good prompt for coursework?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/goal-context-friction-standard", "note": "Goal, context, friction, standard. Friction is the one nobody teaches. Nothing else protects your own thinking.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which AI tool should I use at university?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the question is the wrong shape. Brands date in weeks; the four kinds of work they all do are stable, and nothing here sets that out yet.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when I run out of free messages?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/running-out-of-messages-makes-you-worse", "note": "You get worse before you run out. Scarcity makes people take the first answer and stop pushing back, which is the behaviour with the most evidence behind it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I pay for AI as a student?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/running-out-of-messages-makes-you-worse", "note": "Quotas reset independently across providers, so hitting a wall on one does not end the day. Knowing that removes most of the felt scarcity.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are exams going back to handwriting?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-assess-students-when-ai-can-do-the-assignment", "note": "In places. A blunt answer to a real problem. Supervised conditions certify a narrower thing than the coursework they replace.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What can I safely upload to AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the most neglected question on this list. Other people's data, unpublished work and anything under an NDA are not yours to paste.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I upload a lecturer's slides or someone else's work?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Copyright, data protection and course policy all bear on it and they do not give the same answer.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What if my group partner used AI and did not say?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/group-work-when-everyone-has-ai", "note": "The mark is usually shared and so is the misconduct finding. Agreeing the rule in the first meeting is cheaper than discovering the disagreement at submission.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will there be graduate jobs?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/will-ai-replace-entry-level-jobs", "note": "The measured effect is slower hiring rather than dismissals, concentrated in the most exposed occupations. That is a different claim from jobs disappearing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should I study now?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-i-tell-my-children-to-study", "note": "Nobody can name the safe subject. Those who do are guessing with more confidence than the evidence carries.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is a computing degree still worth starting?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-still-learn-to-code", "note": "The reason to learn has moved rather than gone. Reading and judging code is now the larger part of the job, and that is harder to teach than writing it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I become employable when AI does entry-level work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-juniors-become-senior", "note": "The rungs that built senior judgement are the ones being automated first. Getting the reps deliberately is now something you have to arrange rather than receive.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What goes on a graduate CV when everyone has the same tools?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/if-everyone-has-ai-where-is-the-advantage", "note": "Whatever survives the tools being universal. Prompting is not scarce, not durable and not the constraint, so what you built is the part worth writing down.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I use AI to write my job applications?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and increasingly consequential. Employers are running the same detectors as universities and have said less about what they will do.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I use AI for a literature review?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-often-does-ai-invent-a-source", "note": "Reviews were the paper type most likely to carry a fabricated citation, 57 per cent above the rest. That is structurally the same act as asking a model what a field says.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I tell my supervisor I used AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-to-be-honest-about-using-ai", "note": "Yes, and earlier than feels comfortable. The disclosure that costs you something is the one that protects you later.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it different if I use AI as a disability adjustment?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and badly served. Tools that are a reasonable adjustment for one student are misconduct for another, and few institutions have written down which is which.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it cheating if everyone else is doing it?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-if-you-get-caught-using-ai", "note": "The question answers itself once it is asked about cost rather than detection. What the assignment was bought for is answerable whatever anybody else does.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will using AI now stop me becoming good later?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-missed-reps-of-ai-seniority", "note": "The mechanism is plausible and the direct evidence is thin. Decay in a formed skill and failure to form one are different, and most research measures the first.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do universities owe students on this?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/official-guidance-on-ai-in-education", "note": "More than they currently give. No government in the guidance corpus has issued anything for universities at all.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "stanford-hai-index-2026", "title": "The 2026 AI Index Report", "by": "Stanford HAI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report", "contributes": "The gap between student practice and institutional policy, measured rather than asserted.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Compiled review. Aggregates many third-party sources; strong on breadth, not original research." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "career", "name": "Career", "description": "Whether the job survives, and what makes a person worth hiring.", "questions": [ { "question": "What do I tell a graduate joining my team who has never worked unaided?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "Give them the reps deliberately, because the job will no longer supply them by accident. That is now a management task, not an onboarding one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Am I hiring for capability or for output?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/synthetic-seniority", "note": "Most processes measure output, which AI now supplies. The two came apart and few hiring processes have noticed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I worry about my child using AI for homework?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-children-use-ai", "note": "Ask what the homework was for. If it was certifying knowledge, it still works; if it was building capability, it may not be.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should a young person deliberately learn to do unaided?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "Whatever they intend to be paid to judge later. Verification is not a skill you can acquire after the fact.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will AI replace my job?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/will-ai-replace-my-job", "note": "Almost certainly not as a whole. Task exposure and occupation exposure give different answers, and most commentary conflates them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "dsit-labour-market-2026", "title": "Assessment of AI capabilities and the impact on the UK labour market", "by": "UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessment-of-ai-capabilities-and-the-impact-on-the-uk-labour-market", "contributes": "Complementarity as the variable that matters, rather than exposure alone. High exposure with high complementarity is a different prospect entirely from high exposure with low complementarity.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Government synthesis with no product to sell, and unusually explicit about the gap between predicted and revealed exposure. It is a synthesis of other people's estimates rather than new measurement." }, { "id": "anthropic-labor-market-2026", "title": "Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence", "by": "Massenkoff, M. and McCrory, P., Anthropic", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts", "contributes": "No systematic unemployment effect for exposed workers since late 2022, on national survey data, with the caveat that the framework would detect roughly a one percentage point differential and no smaller.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "COMMERCIAL INTEREST: published by a model provider, using its own product's traffic, and a finding of no unemployment effect is a comfortable one for that publisher. Against that: the paper opens by cataloguing how badly previous exposure work has predicted, states its young-worker result is barely significant, publishes its appendix and issued a public correction on 8 March 2026 when a figure's labels were reversed. US only, one provider's traffic, and the Eloundou metric is anchored to early-2023 capability." }, { "id": "imf-genai-work-2024", "title": "Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work", "by": "Cazzaniga, M. et al. (International Monetary Fund)", "year": 2024, "url": "https://www.imf.org/en/publications/staff-discussion-notes/issues/2024/01/14/gen-ai-artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-work-542379", "contributes": "The complementarity distinction at global scale: roughly 40 per cent of world employment exposed, near 60 per cent in advanced economies, and exposure split by whether AI is likely to complement the work or not.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional macro analysis, not peer-reviewed. Built on occupational exposure measures with the usual limits." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Those 300m Jobs", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/those-300m-jobs", "adds": "Takes the most-repeated number in the field back to its own report, where the argument was that displacement is offset by creation.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Will AI replace entry-level jobs?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/will-ai-replace-entry-level-jobs", "note": "The exposure evidence is real, the causal evidence is not yet. Youth employment is sensitive to a lot of things that are not AI.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "anthropic-labor-market-2026", "title": "Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence", "by": "Massenkoff, M. and McCrory, P., Anthropic", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts", "contributes": "The closest thing to a direct measurement: hiring of 22 to 25 year olds into highly exposed occupations down about 14 per cent since ChatGPT, with no matching rise in their unemployment, which is consistent with entrants never appearing rather than incumbents being removed.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "COMMERCIAL INTEREST: published by a model provider, using its own product's traffic, and a finding of no unemployment effect is a comfortable one for that publisher. Against that: the paper opens by cataloguing how badly previous exposure work has predicted, states its young-worker result is barely significant, publishes its appendix and issued a public correction on 8 March 2026 when a figure's labels were reversed. US only, one provider's traffic, and the Eloundou metric is anchored to early-2023 capability." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Missing Rungs: What Nobody Will Tell You About AI and Your Job", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-missing-rungs-what-nobody-will", "adds": "Argues the question is badly posed. The jobs are not being replaced so much as never offered, which produces the same outcome with nobody having made a redundancy.", "coinage": "The missing rungs" } ] }, { "question": "Which jobs are safest from AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-jobs-are-safest-from-ai", "note": "No defensible ranked list exists, because task exposure and substitution give opposite answers. Four things predict safety better than occupation.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "ILO work on generative AI and jobs", "by": "International Labour Organization", "url": "https://www.ilo.org/publications/generative-ai-and-jobs-refined-global-index-occupational-exposure", "why": "A global occupational exposure index, including the low and middle income countries most exposure work leaves out.", "their_limits": "Exposure modelling, which is a statement about task composition rather than about what will happen." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "ilo-changing-landscape-2026", "title": "Changing landscape of skills in the age of AI", "by": "ILO, ETF, Cedefop, Eurofound, European Commission and UNESCO", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.ilo.org/publications/changing-landscape-skills-age-ai", "contributes": "A task-level global index, which is a better unit of analysis than the occupation-level claims this question usually attracts.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional synthesis. Six agencies, so unusually broad, but a synthesis rather than new primary data." }, { "id": "anthropic-labor-market-2026", "title": "Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence", "by": "Massenkoff, M. and McCrory, P., Anthropic", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts", "contributes": "A ranked list built from observed use rather than speculation, with computer programmers most exposed at 75 per cent coverage and cooks, bartenders and lifeguards at zero.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "COMMERCIAL INTEREST: published by a model provider, using its own product's traffic, and a finding of no unemployment effect is a comfortable one for that publisher. Against that: the paper opens by cataloguing how badly previous exposure work has predicted, states its young-worker result is barely significant, publishes its appendix and issued a public correction on 8 March 2026 when a figure's labels were reversed. US only, one provider's traffic, and the Eloundou metric is anchored to early-2023 capability." }, { "id": "autor-middle-class-2024", "title": "Applying AI to Rebuild Middle Class Jobs", "by": "Autor, D.", "year": 2024, "url": "https://www.nber.org/papers/w32140", "contributes": "The expertise argument: what decides a role's fate is which tasks are removed, because automating the less expert tasks and automating the expert ones move wages and employment in opposite directions.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Working paper, not peer-reviewed. An argument built on economic reasoning and historical analogy rather than measurement of generative AI itself." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I stay valuable as AI improves?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/staying-valuable-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "By holding capabilities that appreciate rather than depreciate. Tool fluency is the fastest-depreciating asset on offer.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I still learn to code?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-still-learn-to-code", "note": "Yes, for a different reason than five years ago. The signals genuinely conflict, and this page presents rather than resolves them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can I use AI if my department has banned it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/using-ai-when-your-department-bans-it", "note": "Almost always on the understanding side, which is usually not what the ban covers. If it touches the words that get marked, do not; if it touches your understanding, do.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the best prompt framework?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/goal-context-friction-standard", "note": "Lo's CLEAR is tighter and Google's TCREI is easier to teach. What none of them has is a slot for what the model should hand back to you rather than do for you.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I stop AI doing my thinking for me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/think-ai-think", "note": "Write your own position before you open the tool, even one line. Without it there is nothing to compare the output against, so every answer arrives sounding correct.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should I never let AI do?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/keep-share-hand-over", "note": "Your position, your voice, the learning struggle, the final decision, anything you must be able to defend. Anything you cannot classify defaults to that column.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I check a source an AI gave me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-source-rule", "note": "Establish the source exists before judging whether it is good, which is the one thing SIFT and the CRAAP test do not do, because both were written when every source under discussion existed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I get experience if AI does entry-level work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-juniors-become-senior", "note": "The rungs people used to climb are the ones most easily automated. Answered 6 September 2026: the dividing line is not how much AI you use but what you do in the first ten minutes, and the tasks safest to hand over are the long ones and not the hard ones.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do juniors become senior if AI does the junior work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-juniors-become-senior", "note": "Junior work was a by-product of senior workload and not a training scheme, so the training has to be chosen deliberately now. Four studies agree that outsourcing is the harm and access is not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I put AI skills on my CV?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Signalling tool use is a depreciating claim. Open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I prove I actually did the work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Provenance is becoming a career asset. Open, and rising fast.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Show Your Working", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/show-your-working", "adds": "Makes the case that proof of work has stopped being a schoolroom instruction and become a professional problem, because the artefact no longer demonstrates the capability behind it.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Human-Generated", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/human-generated", "adds": "The bleakest version of the answer: watermarks can be removed and human authorship cannot be demonstrated at all, so the burden has shifted from the person who wrote it to the person reading it.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Proof of Person", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/proof-of-person", "adds": "Written in 2023, three years before watermarking became a legal question, and it identified proving humanness as a business model rather than a philosophical worry.", "coinage": "Proof of Person" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Trust in the time of AI", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/trust-in-the-time-of-ai", "adds": "Put the question to its own readers in January 2023, asking whether they trusted a human had written the email in front of them, three years before watermarking became a legal requirement.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "You're a Fake", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/youre-a-fake", "adds": "The fraud version rather than the authorship version: demand proof of life, insist on meeting in person, corroborate. Written days after the Hong Kong deepfake case.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What is synthetic seniority?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/synthetic-seniority", "note": "Output that looks senior produced by someone who has not done the work that makes senior judgement possible.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Synthetic Seniority", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/synthetic-seniority", "adds": "Where the term was worked out, and the sharper half of it: the problem is not that the work looks better than the person could manage, it is that the person cannot tell whether it is any good.", "coinage": "Synthetic seniority" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Solving Synthetic Seniority", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/solving-synthetic-seniority", "adds": "The sharper, later version of the argument: AI supplies a seventy per cent floor, people read it as a ceiling, and the danger is the disappearance of anyone who can still tell that seventy is only seventy.", "coinage": "The last thirty per cent" } ] }, { "question": "How do I future-proof my career?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-mid-career-squeeze", "note": "Open, and any useful answer starts by rejecting the frame.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is freelancing safe from AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-ai-leaves-behind", "note": "Open. The platform data is category-specific and more interesting than the headlines.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should I tell my children to study?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-i-tell-my-children-to-study", "note": "No evidence supports ranking subjects by safety. The only scored forecaster got relative growth right 57 per cent of the time.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "uk-ai-skills-life-work-2026", "title": "AI Skills for Life and Work", "by": "Ipsos, The Alan Turing Institute, University of Warwick and Perspective Economics, for DSIT and DCMS", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rd-science-and-analysis-programme-ai-skills-for-life-and-work", "contributes": "Eleven reports including a public dialogue and a general public survey, which together describe what UK adults believe about AI skills as distinct from what the labour market rewards.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "An Ipsos-led consortium with the Alan Turing Institute and Warwick, using several methods on the same question, which is stronger than any single survey. Note the lag: the research completed in March 2025 and published in January 2026, so the fieldwork describes a period two model generations back." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Crossing", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-crossing", "adds": "A migration story rather than an answer, and it reframes the question as one about hope and adaptability rather than about subject choice.", "coinage": "The SuperSkills Ladder" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What I Tell Parents About AI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-i-tell-parents-about-ai", "adds": "The version written for a parent rather than a policymaker, and it answers the question actually being asked at the kitchen table, which is whether university is still worth it.", "coinage": "The augmented mindset; ten, to a thousand, to one; the just-in-case folder" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "My advice to the Next Generation", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/my-advice-to-the-next-generation", "adds": "Deliberately declines to answer with technology. The argument is that digital is a mindset and the question worth answering is who you want to be.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What happens to mid-career professionals?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-mid-career-squeeze", "note": "Too senior to retrain cheaply, too junior to be safe. Under-covered everywhere.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does using AI make me more employable?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/why-learn-to-prompt-is-weak-career-advice", "note": "Less than the advice implies. What appreciates is the ability to judge the output, which is a different skill entirely.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does it matter whether you try before asking AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "It is the difference the experiments actually measured. The arms that made the user do part of the thinking kept most of the gain and lost most of the harm.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who gains most from AI assistance, and who gains least?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-skills-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "The least experienced gain most on output: 34 per cent against 14 on average in one support centre. What that does to their development is unmeasured.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does AI affect workers who speak English as a second language?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-ai-leaves-behind", "note": "Open, and two-sided. The writing gap narrows while AI detection errors fall hardest on exactly these writers.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does AI affect older workers?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-mid-career-squeeze", "note": "Open, and mostly discussed as a training problem when it is a judgement-valuation problem.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Expertise-as-a-Service (EaaS)", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/expertise-as-a-service-eaas", "adds": "The fractional-leadership route, argued as a shift towards deeper specialism rather than as a consolation prize.", "coinage": "Expertise-as-a-Service" } ] }, { "question": "What happens to people who cannot afford the better AI tools?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-ai-leaves-behind", "note": "Open. Capability differences that track subscription tiers are a new axis of workplace inequality.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What becomes a credible signal of competence when output is cheap?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-assess-capability-rather-than-output", "note": "Not the artefact. Structure roughly doubles predictive validity and observation needs about eight repetitions.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I get a job when AI can write the application?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Open, and high volume. The candidate's side of a question the estate currently answers only for employers.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should I do if my employer makes me use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-mid-career-squeeze", "note": "Open, and asked constantly. The refusal case is covered; the compelled case is not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do I do if I think I have already lost the skill?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-you-regain-a-skill-you-have-lost", "note": "Relearning beats learning at every interval tested. What is missing is the protocol, and whether it holds for judgement rather than procedure.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What can humans do that AI cannot?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "The framing invites a list that keeps shrinking. The more durable question is what we would not want performed without the thing underneath it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is the graduate market weak because of AI, or because of interest rates?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/will-ai-replace-entry-level-jobs", "note": "Both were tested against each other for the first time. The junior decline holds inside firms after controlling for industry and time, shows no equivalent in the earlier tightening cycle, and concentrates in AI-exposed occupations, which rates alone would not predict. Suggestive, not settled, and the authors say so.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Am I too senior to retrain and too junior to be safe?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-mid-career-squeeze", "note": "The mid-career squeeze. Under-covered everywhere, including here.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Wisdom & Unlearning", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/wisdom-and-unlearning", "adds": "Argues experience alone has become a liability, written from inside thirty years of it rather than about it.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Will AI replace lawyers, doctors, accountants or teachers?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-jobs-are-safest-from-ai", "note": "Better answered once with a method than fourteen times by profession. Task exposure and substitution give opposite rankings.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will AI replace tasks or whole jobs?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-jobs-are-safest-from-ai", "note": "The right unit of analysis, and the reason occupational lists mislead.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce", "by": "Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson and Yang, Stanford", "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576", "why": "844 tasks scored for automation and augmentation potential, which is the task-level detail this estate argues for and does not itself hold.", "their_limits": "A preprint rather than a peer-reviewed paper. US-only. It measures what workers WANT and what experts think is POSSIBLE, neither of which is a measurement of what happens to capability when a task is automated." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "ilo-genai-jobs-2025", "title": "Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure", "by": "International Labour Organization (with NASK)", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.ilo.org/publications/generative-ai-and-jobs-refined-global-index-occupational-exposure", "contributes": "Task-level global modelling, which is the unit of analysis the occupation-level headlines routinely lose.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional working paper with published methodology. Exposure modelling, so it estimates what could be affected rather than what will be." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should I analyse my own job for AI exposure?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-mid-career-squeeze", "note": "The personal version of the task-exposure method. Open, and high volume.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "dsit-labour-market-2026", "title": "Assessment of AI capabilities and the impact on the UK labour market", "by": "UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessment-of-ai-capabilities-and-the-impact-on-the-uk-labour-market", "contributes": "A published method for splitting exposure from complementarity that an individual can apply to their own role.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Government synthesis with no product to sell, and unusually explicit about the gap between predicted and revealed exposure. It is a synthesis of other people's estimates rather than new measurement." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I demonstrate value when everyone uses AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-mid-career-squeeze", "note": "Open. Closely related to proving you did the work.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will AI make experts more or less valuable?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/staying-valuable-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "Autor argues AI could widen the reach of expertise. Acemoglu models the gains as modest. Both are in the evidence base.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "openai-frontier-2026", "title": "Work at the Frontier: How AI is Expanding What People Do at Work", "by": "OpenAI Economic Research", "year": 2026, "url": "https://openai.com/index/how-ai-is-expanding-what-people-do-at-work/", "contributes": "The uncomfortable half of the finding: people are taking on work outside their own domain, where they have no basis for judging whether the answer is right.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "Large-sample behavioural data of a kind nobody outside a model provider can obtain, and the first real measurement of task crossover. COMMERCIAL INTEREST: OpenAI benefits from the finding that its product expands what workers can do. It is usage data, so it shows what people ASKED for, not whether the answer was any good or whether the user could tell." }, { "id": "autor-middle-class-2024", "title": "Applying AI to Rebuild Middle Class Jobs", "by": "Autor, D.", "year": 2024, "url": "https://www.nber.org/papers/w32140", "contributes": "The clearest statement that this is a design choice rather than a property of the technology.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Working paper, not peer-reviewed. An argument built on economic reasoning and historical analogy rather than measurement of generative AI itself." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Actual Intelligence", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/actual-intelligence", "adds": "Argues expertise built slowly becomes more valuable precisely because it cannot be produced quickly, which is the opposite of the usual reading.", "coinage": "Artificial, actual and emotional intelligence, distinguished" } ] }, { "question": "What happens to workers who refuse to use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-mid-career-squeeze", "note": "The abstention case, taken seriously rather than mocked.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does judgement actually pay more?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-judgement-premium", "note": "It is measured in what employers ask for and not in what they pay. PwC's 2026 barometer gives roles where AI takes the routine work twice the job growth and 42 per cent faster advertised salary growth, and no study prices judgement itself.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "skills", "name": "Skills", "description": "What to learn, what becomes scarce, and what stops being worth much.", "questions": [ { "question": "What are core skills?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-are-core-skills", "note": "The World Economic Forum's unit: the skills employers say workers need today, classified against the Forum's own Global Skills Taxonomy so the figure is comparable between editions.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does the 39 per cent figure about skills actually mean?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-are-core-skills", "note": "The share of a worker's core skill set employers expect to be transformed or become outdated by 2030. Restating the whole of it as obsolescence drops half of what the report says.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is skill disruption accelerating?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-are-core-skills", "note": "Not on this measure. The series runs 35 per cent in 2016, 57 in 2020, 44 in 2023 and 39 in 2025, so it has fallen through both editions covering the period since ChatGPT.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are human skills?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-skills-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "A contested term. Defined and defended here rather than assumed, because most usage is decorative.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which skills become more valuable as AI improves?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "Employer surveys say analytical and creative thinking. That is stated demand, not revealed price, and the distinction matters.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce", "by": "Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson and Yang, Stanford", "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576", "why": "Early evidence rather than assertion, pointing at a shift from information-focused competencies towards interpersonal ones.", "their_limits": "A preprint rather than a peer-reviewed paper. US-only. It measures what workers WANT and what experts think is POSSIBLE, neither of which is a measurement of what happens to capability when a task is automated." }, "context": { "url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-companies-to-know", "title": "The AI companies you should know, and why", "why": "The industry map: at every layer the winning companies are pushing AI from answering towards doing, which is the shift that decides which skills gain value." }, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "uk-ai-labour-market-survey-2025", "title": "AI Labour Market Study and Survey", "by": "UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-skills-for-life-and-work-employer-survey-findings", "contributes": "UK employer-stated demand and reported shortages, which is the demand side of a question usually answered only from the supply side.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Employer-side UK data with a government sampling frame. Employers describing their own demand, which is a statement of intent as much as of fact, and vacancy text is a noisy instrument for skill requirements." }, { "id": "oecd-ai-and-skills-2026", "title": "AI and skills: What we know so far", "by": "OECD", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/ai-and-skills_f843b352-en/full-report.html", "contributes": "Cross-country institutional analysis of changing skill requirements, built on survey instruments this estate has no equivalent of.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional analysis. The headline figure derives from Green and Lamby (2023), built largely on job-posting data, so it describes demand as advertised." }, { "id": "pwc-jobs-barometer-2026", "title": "2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer: Two futures for jobs in an AI era", "by": "PwC", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2026/pwc-2026-ai-jobs-barometer.html", "contributes": "Large-scale vacancy analysis of what employers are actually paying for, as distinct from what surveys say they intend to pay for.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Large-scale job-advertisement analysis across more than a billion adverts. Observed demand rather than stated preference, though adverts describe what employers ask for rather than what work requires. The entry-level finding is US-only." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Knowledge Is No Longer Power", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/knowledge-is-no-longer-power", "adds": "Where the SuperSkills framing was set out publicly: if knowledge is universally available then the advantage moves to judgement about which questions are worth asking.", "coinage": "SuperSkills, named publicly here" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Being Unique in the Face of ChatGPT", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/chatgpt-unique", "adds": "Argues knowledge itself has been commoditised and uniqueness is the remaining scarce asset, before that became the standard framing.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Are human skills actually becoming scarcer?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Listed as unknown in the state of the evidence. Eight years of surveys are not the same as wage data.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "wef-human-advantage-2026", "title": "The Human Advantage: Stronger Brains in the Age of AI", "by": "World Economic Forum with the McKinsey Health Institute", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-human-advantage-stronger-brains-in-the-age-of-ai/", "contributes": "The institutional statement of the scarcity claim, useful as the mainstream position to test rather than as settled evidence.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional report, launched at Davos, co-produced with a consultancy health institute. Framing and synthesis rather than new primary evidence." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Why curiosity is the only moat left", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/why-curiosity-is-the-only-moat-left", "adds": "Treats curiosity as a business capability that can be measured and incentivised rather than a temperament, which is the version an organisation can act on.", "coinage": "Competitor archaeology" } ] }, { "question": "What is a SuperSkill?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-introduction", "note": "A capability that governs the other capabilities: durable across technological cycles, transferable, governing how you work with intelligent systems, and compounding. Four tests, and seven that pass them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are the seven SuperSkills?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-introduction", "note": "Curiosity, empathy, big picture thinking, change readiness, global adaptability, principled innovation and an augmented mindset.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is an augmented mindset?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-augmented-mindset", "note": "Working with capable machines without surrendering the judgement that makes the work yours.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why does curiosity matter more now?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-curiosity", "note": "Because answers became cheap and questions did not. The scarce input moved.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What makes us different", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-makes-us-different", "adds": "Where curiosity was first placed at the top of the list, before it became the first of the seven.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Does empathy still matter at work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-empathy", "note": "Yes, and the evidence that AI is rated as more empathetic than clinicians makes the question sharper rather than settled.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Thing That Proves You're Human", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-thing-that-proves-youre-human", "adds": "Argues squarely for trained capacity over feeling, which is the position the research pages describe more cautiously.", "coinage": "Outsourced recognition" } ] }, { "question": "What is big picture thinking?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-big-picture-thinking", "note": "Holding the shape of a problem when every component can be generated separately and convincingly.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is change readiness?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-change-readiness", "note": "The capability that decides whether a shift is absorbed or merely survived.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is global adaptability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-global-adaptability", "note": "Working across contexts that do not share your assumptions, which is most of them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is principled innovation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-principled-innovation", "note": "Building things on purpose, with the consequences treated as part of the design rather than as an afterthought.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is skill atrophy?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-deskilling", "note": "Covered within deskilling, which is the older and better-evidenced term for the same phenomenon.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is deskilling?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-deskilling", "note": "Braverman to Bainbridge to now. Established, and not a SuperSkills coinage.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can you regain a skill you have lost?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-you-regain-a-skill-you-have-lost", "note": "Usually, and faster than you built it. Relearning beats learning at every interval tested, though never yet tested on professional judgement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "oecd-skills-ai-age-2026", "title": "Skills in the AI age", "by": "OECD", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/skills-in-the-ai-age_972bd15e-en/full-report/component-4.html", "contributes": "Institutional treatment of training and reskilling at population scale, where this estate works at the level of the individual and the team.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional analysis, methodologically documented, not peer-reviewed." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Are You Flying, Or Are You Being Flown?", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/are-you-flying-or-are-you-being-flown", "adds": "Argues the recovery question is the wrong one to be asking, because by the time it occurs to you the practice that maintained the skill is gone.", "coinage": "Algorithmic drift" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Wisdom & Unlearning", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/wisdom-and-unlearning", "adds": "Comes at it from the other side: the harder problem is knowing which hard-won expertise to deliberately drop.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "How fast do skills decay?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-fast-do-skills-decay", "note": "From d = -0.01 immediately after training to d = -1.4 after a year of non-use, across 189 data points. Cognitive tasks decay faster than physical ones, which is the finding that matters.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Half-Life of Skills", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-half-life-of-skills", "adds": "The argument alongside the evidence: what matters is not the average rate but that the slowest-decaying skills are the ones built by the practice AI is now most efficiently removing.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What is judgement?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-judgement", "note": "Recognising what a situation is before any option is weighed. Klein, Dreyfus and Polanyi on where it comes from, separated from decision, reasoning and skill, and where Kahneman says it should not be trusted.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between a skill and a capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-organisational-capability", "note": "A skill performs an activity. A capability achieves an outcome, which needs skills combined with knowledge, judgement and the ability to adapt them to a situation they were not learned in.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is an organisation's capability, as distinct from its people's?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-organisational-capability", "note": "It lives in routines, in Nelson and Winter's sense: coordinated sequences that persist beyond the individuals running them. So it can be lost with nobody leaving.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "teece-1997", "title": "Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management", "by": "Teece, D. J., Pisano, G. and Shuen, A.", "year": 1997, "url": "https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199708)18:7<509::AID-SMJ882>3.0.CO;2-Z", "contributes": "The origin of the distinction the estate relies on. Capability is held in routines and configurations, not only in individuals, so it can be lost without anybody leaving.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Theoretical synthesis. The construct has been criticised as difficult to operationalise and measure." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are interpersonal skills becoming more valuable than information-handling ones?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-skills-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "Partly answered as an argument, and now with an early empirical signal behind it. The Stanford work reports competencies shifting from information-focused towards interpersonal. Treat it as a signal rather than a finding: it is a preprint, and the shift is inferred from task profiles rather than measured in people.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are complementary skills?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Complementary skills are the OECD's term for teamwork, autonomy, problem solving, creative thinking, communication, collaboration and emotional intelligence: the capabilities that enable high-performance work and the ability to keep lear...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is hybrid intelligence?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Hybrid intelligence is the European Policy Centre's proposed basis for skills policy: technical AI literacy combined with domain expertise and distinctively human capabilities, rather than AI skills alone.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is research taste?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Research taste is knowing what to study next, which experiment to run, and sensing where a new approach might lie. It has proved hard to train because the feedback loops are long and the data is thin.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is ai literacy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-does-ai-literacy-mean-for-leaders", "note": "In the European Union, yes. Article 4 of the EU AI Act has applied since 2 February 2025 and requires providers and deployers of AI systems to take measures to ensure, to their best extent, a sufficient level of AI literacy among their s...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is substitution myth?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-substitution-myth", "note": "The assumption that new technology can be introduced as a simple substitution of machines for people, preserving the basic system while improving it on some output measures.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is tacit knowledge?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-tacit-knowledge", "note": "Knowledge that resists full articulation, acquired through experience and practice rather than instruction, and typically transmitted through shared work rather than documentation.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What skills should I learn now?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The scarcity test matters more than the usefulness test: not what is useful, but what is hard to source.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "work", "name": "Work", "description": "Which tasks belong to humans, which to machines, and how the split is decided.", "questions": [ { "question": "What stays human?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "A narrower set than the optimists claim and a wider one than the pessimists allow. The boundary keeps moving, and that movement is the finding.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce", "by": "Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson and Yang, Stanford", "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576", "why": "An empirical answer to sit beside the argued one: workers ranked which tasks they want to keep, and the Automation Red Light Zone is where AI is capable and they still do not want it.", "their_limits": "A preprint rather than a peer-reviewed paper. US-only. It measures what workers WANT and what experts think is POSSIBLE, neither of which is a measurement of what happens to capability when a task is automated." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "We've Been the AI All Along", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/weve-been-the-ai-all-along", "adds": "Inverts the question. Argues that much of what people fear losing to machines was already being done mechanically by people, and the loss began before the technology arrived.", "coinage": "Artificial versus authentic intelligence" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Knowledge Is No Longer Power", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/knowledge-is-no-longer-power", "adds": "Argues the dividing line is not between people and machines but between people who have built these capacities and people who have not.", "coinage": "SuperSkills, named publicly here" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Actual Intelligence", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/actual-intelligence", "adds": "The answer given as time rather than as a list of skills: the years of unrewarded practice are the part a model cannot fake.", "coinage": "Artificial, actual and emotional intelligence, distinguished" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What makes us different", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-makes-us-different", "adds": "The early version of the argument, useful mainly for showing what has survived three years of contact with evidence and what has not.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Reverse Singularity", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-reverse-singularity", "adds": "The danger stated in reverse: not machines becoming human, but humans becoming robotic through accumulated defaults.", "coinage": "The reverse singularity; the exponential gap; the AI fire drill" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Being Unique in the Face of ChatGPT", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/chatgpt-unique", "adds": "The January 2023 version, written six weeks after ChatGPT launched, and worth reading for what has survived three years of evidence and what has not.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "How do humans and AI make decisions together?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-ai-decision-making", "note": "Badly, by default. The evidence says the common configuration underperforms whichever party was stronger alone.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I check everything AI produces?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-verifiers-discount", "note": "Checking everything is an aspiration rather than a policy. What matters is where the verification is placed and who is paid for it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is usage the same as adoption?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/usage-theatre", "note": "No. Seat counts and prompt volumes measure activity. Nothing in them says capability changed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the unclaimed hour?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-unclaimed-hour", "note": "The time AI gives back that nobody designs a use for, and which therefore disappears.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who gets credit when AI helped?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/outsourced-recognition", "note": "Recognition follows visible output, and AI makes output cheap to produce and hard to attribute.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you redesign a job around AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Open, and needed as a method with a worked example rather than a principle.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "openai-frontier-2026", "title": "Work at the Frontier: How AI is Expanding What People Do at Work", "by": "OpenAI Economic Research", "year": 2026, "url": "https://openai.com/index/how-ai-is-expanding-what-people-do-at-work/", "contributes": "Evidence that the task content of jobs is already moving before anybody rewrites a job description, which means redesign is documenting a change rather than initiating one.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "Large-sample behavioural data of a kind nobody outside a model provider can obtain, and the first real measurement of task crossover. COMMERCIAL INTEREST: OpenAI benefits from the finding that its product expands what workers can do. It is usage data, so it shows what people ASKED for, not whether the answer was any good or whether the user could tell." }, { "id": "bainbridge-1983", "title": "Ironies of Automation", "by": "Bainbridge, L.", "year": 1983, "url": "https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf", "contributes": "The warning any redesign should be tested against: a redesigned job is usually a harder job with a shorter runway for learning it.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Foundational theoretical paper, extensively validated in aviation and process control over four decades." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to middle management?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Open, and asked constantly. Middle management is where work is allocated and judgement is checked, which are the two functions AI touches most directly. Nobody has yet measured what happens to a layer whose main output was coordination.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you run a meeting when AI attends it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-does-to-a-team", "note": "WATCH. Genuinely new, and moving fast enough to be worth watching before writing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should we cut headcount because of AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Open, and the useful version names the cases where it destroyed capability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you hire when everyone uses AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Assessment, but for employers. Shares its evidence base with the education cluster.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the verifier's discount?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-verifiers-discount", "note": "Verification is skilled work priced as administrative residue, so organisations get less of it than they think they bought.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI help experienced or inexperienced workers more?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-skills-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "The gains skew towards the less experienced in four independent settings. Whether that is good news depends on what happens to the experienced.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "cui-2025", "title": "The Effects of Generative AI on High-Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers", "by": "Cui, Z. K., Demirer, M., Jaffe, S., Musolff, L., Peng, S. and Salz, T.", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-effects-of-generative-ai-on-high-skilled-work-evidence-from-three-field-experiments-with-software-developers/", "contributes": "Field-experimental evidence on high-skilled work, which is the setting where the estate's concern about verification actually bites.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Randomised controlled trials at real firms, which is rare and valuable. The headline estimate carries a standard error of 10.3 percent, so the true effect is wide." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is AI literacy, and is it the right goal?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-does-ai-literacy-mean-for-leaders", "note": "Now a legal obligation, and a weak frame for a strong duty. Literacy language invites a training solution, and completion is not capability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "AI Literacy", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/ai-literacy", "adds": "Splits it into understanding, evaluating and using, and argues the common failure is reactive use rather than ignorance.", "coinage": "From Chat-GPT to Strat-GPT" } ] }, { "question": "Who bears the cost when AI removes developmental work?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "The organisation books the saving, the junior absorbs the loss, and the bill arrives years later in a thinner senior tier. Nobody's P&L carries it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI increase managerial surveillance?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-does-to-a-team", "note": "Open, and the mechanism is the same one that makes AI useful: a system that drafts your work can also log it. The two are hard to separate by design.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI reduce workers' autonomy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-does-to-a-team", "note": "Open. Autonomy is discretion over how the work gets done, and a tool that supplies the how is a different thing from one that supplies the answer.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who pays for the time it takes to verify AI output?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-verifiers-discount", "note": "Almost nowhere is it budgeted. Verification is priced as administrative residue and absorbed by whoever is closest to the risk.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when AI removes the visible work but increases the invisible responsibility?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-invisible-work-of-oversight", "note": "Bainbridge, 1983. Taking away the easy parts of a task can make the difficult parts harder, because the easy parts were the practice.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Invisible Work", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/invisible-work", "adds": "The essay the page is built on: the checking and quiet correction that keep an organisation upright have never appeared on any measure of output, so they go first.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "This Is Zombie Work", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/this-is-zombie-work", "adds": "The essay that named the condition: the judgement leaves the role while the person is still required to be present, which turns a decision-maker into an approver without anybody changing the job title.", "coinage": "Zombie work" } ] }, { "question": "Does AI increase the number of decisions each person has to make?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-does-to-a-team", "note": "Open. If the drafting cost falls to near zero, more options reach the person who has to choose, and choosing was already the expensive part.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should teams record decisions that AI influenced?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-shared-prompt-review", "note": "Article 12 of the EU AI Act requires the log without settling what belongs in it. The Shared Prompt Review answers the team half, four things on the table, and leaves the regulatory record open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you stop AI flattening what a team thinks?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-shared-prompt-review", "note": "The flattening is measured: 776 professionals at Procter and Gamble, and AI erased the difference between what a technical and a commercial specialist proposed. The remedy is a practice nobody has trialled, and the page says so.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Where does verification belong in an AI-assisted workflow?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-owns-verification-when-ai-does-the-work", "note": "Placement decides whether it happens. Review after generation is the weakest position and the most common one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you redesign a workflow so people keep meaningful judgement?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/delegation-boundary-map", "note": "Decide where judgement stays before deciding what to automate. The ordering is the whole intervention.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "This Is Zombie Work", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/this-is-zombie-work", "adds": "Argues the loss is specific rather than general. What goes is the part of the work that required a view, and what remains is the part that requires attendance.", "coinage": "Zombie work" } ] }, { "question": "How do you stop AI becoming the default first resort?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "Attempt before you ask. It is the difference the two guardrail experiments actually measured.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should an AI pilot measure besides time saved?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-measure-ai-adoption-properly", "note": "In the one randomised trial that checked, self-reported time saved had the wrong sign.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you know whether a workflow is designed for learning?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-productive-struggle", "note": "Ask whether anyone still attempts the task before the answer arrives. That is the whole test.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will AI take over decision making?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and if it happens it happens by accumulation rather than by anybody deciding. That is the drift argument: no single delegation looks like a transfer of authority, and the total is one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are the risks of relying on AI for decisions?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-over-reliance", "note": "Two that compound: the capability that stops being exercised, and the oversight that becomes formal because the system is usually right.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who supervises work they cannot do themselves?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-supervises-work-they-cannot-do", "note": "Supervision has become approval, and no management system in common use can tell the difference.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "bainbridge-1983", "title": "Ironies of Automation", "by": "Bainbridge, L.", "year": 1983, "url": "https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf", "contributes": "The ironies stated in their original form. The operator is retained for the cases the automation cannot handle, and is the person the automation has left least practised.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Foundational theoretical paper, extensively validated in aviation and process control over four decades." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are executives reading summaries instead of the source?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-does-to-a-team", "note": "A quiet change in how senior decisions get made, with no measurement anywhere. Open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to institutional memory?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-to-institutional-memory", "note": "It splits. Retrieval of the recorded part improves; the reasons, the rejected options and the trust calibration were never recorded and move through people.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI change what a meeting is for?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-ai-attend-my-meetings", "note": "If the record is automatic and complete, the marginal value of being present falls and meetings drift towards broadcast.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is my organisation measuring the right thing?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-measure-ai-adoption-properly", "note": "Almost certainly not. Licences, seats and prompts all rise while nothing changes about capability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between augmentation and automation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Established distinction, and routinely collapsed in practice. Open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Human + AI Era", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-human-ai-era", "adds": "Argues the distinction has to be decided in advance and in writing, because discovered after the fact it is just a description of what happened.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "How do I decide what to automate?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/delegation-boundary-map", "note": "Nine stages, and the question answered per stage rather than per tool.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is human-on-the-loop?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-meaningful-human-oversight", "note": "Oversight without per-decision review. Article 14 does not require a human to approve every decision.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI increase workload?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-invisible-work-of-oversight", "note": "Partial, and conditional. Task productivity and workload are separable: cheaper units say nothing about how many units follow. That is a management response, not a property of the tool.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should employees disclose when they use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/proving-you-did-the-work", "note": "Disclosure norms are forming now and differ by context.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who owns AI-generated work?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Legal and practical answers diverge.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI reduce knowledge-sharing between colleagues?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-to-institutional-memory", "note": "Partial. Early work points to rerouting rather than reduction, on very little evidence. The mechanism is stated; the effect is not established.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should AI change performance management?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and urgent because performance systems measure output, which is the first thing AI inflates. A system that rewards visible output will now reward tool use and call it performance.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should employees be judged differently if they use AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and distinct from whether they should disclose it. The defensible position is that the standard is the work, but that collapses where the job is developmental and the point was the practice.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we compare the performance of somebody using AI with somebody who does not?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the measurement problem is genuine rather than administrative. On current evidence the tools help less experienced workers more on some tasks, so the same output no longer implies the same capability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who should receive the benefit when AI makes an employee more productive?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and a distribution question rather than a technical one. The employer supplied the tool, the employee supplied the judgement to use it well, and no established principle allocates between them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should pay change when AI changes the value of a job?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and it cuts both ways, which is what makes it hard. Autor and Thompson's data implies some roles appreciate and others commoditise depending on which tasks were removed. Reward systems are built to move in one direction.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should incentives change when AI produces more of the output?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Any incentive tied to volume of output is now partly an incentive to use the tool, which may be fine or may be exactly what erodes the capability the organisation is paying for.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we stop AI rewarding visible output over real capability?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/usage-theatre", "note": "Partly answered through usage theatre, which names the failure. The measurement answer is the same as everywhere on this estate: assess what people can do unaided, on a date, with an owner. It is unpopular because it is uncomfortable to run.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What rights should employees have over AI decisions made about them?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and partly settled in law in some jurisdictions and not others. What is not settled anywhere is the case where AI informed a decision that a human then made, which is most of them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should an employee be able to appeal when AI influences a decision about them?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and appeal is only meaningful if the decision can be reconstructed. Article 12 logging makes reconstruction possible for high-risk systems and requires nobody to do it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we know whether AI is making our people decisions fairer or less fair?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and it requires a baseline almost nobody has. Human hiring and promotion decisions were not audited for consistency before, so 'fairer than what?' has no measured answer.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI create new inequalities between employees?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Differential access to tools, to training and to the kind of work that lets you use them well is the mechanism. CIPD's position is that wherever AI has a human impact the people function should be as involved as IT and legal, which is a claim about jurisdiction rather than evidence that the inequality exists.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it still my idea if AI helped me write it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-it-still-my-idea-if-ai-helped-me-write-it", "note": "Open, and a different question from whether the work is any good. The older form of imposter feeling asked whether an idea was strong enough and could be settled by producing evidence. This one asks whose the thought was, and cannot be settled the same way, because the output that would serve as the evidence is the thing causing the doubt. The nearest usable test is whether you can defend the position without the model in front of you.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The New Imposter Syndrome", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-new-imposter-syndrome", "adds": "Offers the only test the essay thinks survives, which is whether you can defend the position without the model in front of you.", "coinage": "Phantom authorship, velocity vertigo, the hollowing" } ] }, { "question": "Who ends up worse off as AI spreads?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-ai-leaves-behind", "note": "Partly answered at the level of individuals, and newly complicated at every larger scale. Anthropic's exposure data inverts the usual assumption: the most exposed workers are more likely female, more educated and paid 47 per cent more than the unexposed. The World Bank's picture is starker again, with high-income countries holding 91 per cent of AI venture funding and low-income countries under 0.1 per cent of data centre capacity. Whether AI widens or narrows any of these gaps is unsettled.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "anthropic-labor-market-2026", "title": "Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence", "by": "Massenkoff, M. and McCrory, P., Anthropic", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts", "contributes": "The exposed group is more likely female, more educated and better paid, earning 47 per cent more on average, which inverts the usual assumption that automation arrives first for low-paid work.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "COMMERCIAL INTEREST: published by a model provider, using its own product's traffic, and a finding of no unemployment effect is a comfortable one for that publisher. Against that: the paper opens by cataloguing how badly previous exposure work has predicted, states its young-worker result is barely significant, publishes its appendix and issued a public correction on 8 March 2026 when a figure's labels were reversed. US only, one provider's traffic, and the Eloundou metric is anchored to early-2023 capability." }, { "id": "worldbank-dptr-2025", "title": "Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025: Strengthening AI Foundations", "by": "World Bank", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/dptr2025-ai-foundations", "contributes": "Generative AI vacancies rose ninefold from 2021 to 2024 and the jobs created are polarised, a small number of highly paid roles alongside a large volume of low-paid data work.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional compilation with a development mandate and no product to sell. Infrastructure and vacancy data rather than measurement of what happens to workers, and vacancy counts are a noisy proxy for demand." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI blur the boundaries between professions?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and newly measurable. OpenAI's own telemetry finds 43.5 per cent of occupation-specific ChatGPT messages concern tasks belonging to a different occupation, rising to 77 per cent for customer experience workers. OpenAI frames this as roles expanding. The question that framing leaves out is what happens when the work crosses into a domain the person cannot evaluate: a marketer troubleshooting code has no basis for telling a good answer from a confident one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "openai-frontier-2026", "title": "Work at the Frontier: How AI is Expanding What People Do at Work", "by": "OpenAI Economic Research", "year": 2026, "url": "https://openai.com/index/how-ai-is-expanding-what-people-do-at-work/", "contributes": "The measurement the question needs: 43.5 per cent of occupation-specific ChatGPT messages concern tasks belonging to another occupation, with customer experience at 77 per cent and designers at 75. Direction as well as volume: design imports heavily and exports almost nothing, engineering is the reverse, marketing does both.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "Large-sample behavioural data of a kind nobody outside a model provider can obtain, and the first real measurement of task crossover. COMMERCIAL INTEREST: OpenAI benefits from the finding that its product expands what workers can do. It is usage data, so it shows what people ASKED for, not whether the answer was any good or whether the user could tell." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who is accountable when work crosses a professional boundary?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. This is where the crossover finding meets the professions. Regulated work carries duties attached to a person holding a qualification. If a non-lawyer drafts something legal and a non-accountant runs the numbers, the task moved and the professional duty did not move with it. Nobody has resolved what that means.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which tasks do workers not want automated, even where AI can do them?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-tasks-do-workers-not-want-automated", "note": "Refusal is patterned. Workers were positive about automating 46.1 per cent of 844 tasks in their own occupations after being prompted to weigh job loss and lost enjoyment. Where they refused, distrust of the system's accuracy outranked fear of replacement by roughly two to one, and desire ran negatively against enjoyment at -0.28. The Automation Red Light Zone, high capability and low desire, is the part an employer needs a policy for.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is there a right level of human involvement for a task?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-tasks-do-workers-not-want-automated", "note": "There is a preferred level and it is occupation-specific. The Human Agency Scale runs H1 to H5, and H3, an equal partnership outperforming either party alone, was the dominant worker-desired level in 47 of 104 occupations. The authors are explicit that higher levels are not inherently better. This estate now sets out the scale and how to use it, and still holds no instrument of its own.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should worker preferences decide what gets automated?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-tasks-do-workers-not-want-automated", "note": "Partly. The page argues preferences are evidence and not a veto, and states the three reasons: workers may misjudge the technology, may misjudge their own interests, and may not answer honestly, which the paper's authors say themselves. What remains open is who should hold the decision where preference and capability disagree, and no published rule settles that.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do workers and AI experts hold the same view of what AI can do?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-tasks-do-workers-not-want-automated", "note": "No, and the disagreement runs one way. Ratings matched on 26.9 per cent of 844 tasks, and on 47.5 per cent the worker wanted more human involvement than the expert judged necessary. Divergence is widest in occupations experts rate as fully autonomous, which is where a rollout will meet it first.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is automating versus informating?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-automating-versus-informating", "note": "Automating replaces human judgement with a machine. Informating generates information that deepens the worker's understanding. The same system can do either, and which one happens is a management choice rather than a property of the tech...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is Frontier Firm?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-a-frontier-firm", "note": "A Frontier Firm is Microsoft's term for a company built on purchasable machine reasoning, human-agent teams, and a new role for every employee as a manager of agents.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is capacity gap?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The capacity gap is Microsoft's term for the deficit between what a business demands and the maximum output humans alone can supply.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is Work Chart?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The Work Chart is Microsoft's proposed successor to the org chart, structured around jobs that need doing rather than functional expertise.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is centaur and cyborg work?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-jagged-frontier", "note": "Centaur work divides tasks cleanly between person and machine. Cyborg work interweaves them continuously, moving back and forth across the jagged frontier.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is aI control as work?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "AI control is Narayanan and Kapoor's prediction that a steadily greater share of what people do in their jobs will consist of controlling AI rather than doing the underlying task.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is identity commoditisation?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Identity commoditisation is the erosion of a professional's sense of uniqueness and dignity as their role narrows to supervising a system, until the work that carried their identity is no longer the work they do.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the experiential chasm?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The experiential chasm is the gap between the small group who have spent real hours with frontier models and the majority still experimenting superficially. Bain describes it as neither a seniority gap nor a training gap, and as widening...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI actually make people more productive?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-ai-actually-make-people-more-productive", "note": "On narrow specified tasks, by a lot. In continuing work inside a system somebody knows, uncertain and sometimes negative. Nothing in the national statistics yet, and self-report is unreliable in both directions.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will AI replace programmers?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/will-ai-replace-programmers", "note": "No study shows replacement. A greenfield coding task went 55.8 per cent faster; experienced developers in mature repositories were measured 19 per cent slower. The evidenced risk is to how developers are made.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI save time?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-ai-actually-make-people-more-productive", "note": "Two government trials of 23,500 licences report 26 and 19 minutes a day, both self-reported, neither with a baseline. Where the time then goes is unmeasured everywhere.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "leadership", "name": "Leadership", "description": "What leaders and boards must stay capable of doing themselves.", "questions": [ { "question": "Should the chief executive own AI personally?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Open. The argument for is that judgement allocation is not delegable; the argument against is that chief executives own everything and therefore nothing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does a chief executive need to understand that a CTO does not?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-leaders-respond-to-ai", "note": "Where the organisation will still need human judgement in five years, and what it is doing this year to make sure it has it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does where we put AI say what we believe about our people?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Usually yes, and usually without anyone deciding it. The reporting line is a statement of belief that nobody had to write down.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who is accountable when AI reduces capability rather than cost?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "In most structures, nobody. Cost has an owner and a number; capability has neither, so capability is the one that erodes.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Architecture of Drift", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-drift", "adds": "Argues the accountability gap is structural rather than a failure of individuals: nobody decided, so nobody is answerable.", "coinage": "The Drift vs Design Matrix" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Decision You Never Made", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-decision-you-never-made", "adds": "Argues that the absence of a decision is the mechanism, not a complication: positions accumulated from individual convenience cannot be traced to anybody and therefore cannot be defended or reversed.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "A Retreat from Accountability", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/a-retreat-from-accountability", "adds": "The platform version of the same abdication: responsibility redefined out of existence while the mechanism that needed governing keeps running.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What should a board ask when an AI strategy is presented?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-a-board-ask-about-ai", "note": "Ask what it assumes people will still be able to do, and how that will be checked. Most strategies do not answer either.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we tell an ambitious AI strategy from a reckless one?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/design-versus-drift", "note": "By whether the judgement calls were made in advance or are being discovered. Ambition and drift look identical in a board pack.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Our AI strategy was written eighteen months ago. What is now wrong with it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-wrong-with-an-ai-strategy-written-eighteen-months-ago", "note": "Probably not the tools it names. Five things it could not have settled: agents that act, the reversals, Article 14 in force, the shadow use, and what the labs now say about themselves.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should leaders respond to AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-leaders-respond-to-ai", "note": "Not with a tool rollout. The decisions that matter are about capability, accountability and what the organisation stops doing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should a board ask about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-a-board-ask-about-ai", "note": "Twelve questions, each paired with the answer that should worry you. Ask two or three in passing rather than as an agenda item.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "nist-ai-rmf", "title": "Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0)", "by": "National Institute of Standards and Technology", "year": 2023, "url": "https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework", "contributes": "A shared vocabulary a board and a risk function will both recognise, which is most of what makes an oversight conversation possible.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Official framework, widely adopted as a de facto standard. Voluntary and process-oriented; it describes what to do rather than evidencing what works. Currently under revision." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does AI literacy mean for leaders?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-does-ai-literacy-mean-for-leaders", "note": "A legal obligation under Article 4 of the EU AI Act since February 2025, enforced since August 2026, at every risk tier. Tool training does not satisfy it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "AI Literacy", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/ai-literacy", "adds": "The move from asking how to make the tool do a task to deciding where the tool belongs in the work, which is a leadership question rather than a training one.", "coinage": "From Chat-GPT to Strat-GPT" } ] }, { "question": "What is the AI readiness lie?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-readiness-lie", "note": "Readiness assessments measure intent and infrastructure. Neither predicts whether capability survives contact with the tools.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is our AI adoption drift or design?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/design-versus-drift", "note": "Most organisations are not choosing. They are accumulating decisions that were never made, which is drift with a strategy document attached.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Architecture of Drift", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-drift", "adds": "The essay where the distinction was worked out, and it makes the uncomfortable half of the case: drift requires no villain and no bad decision, leaving governance nothing to grip.", "coinage": "The Drift vs Design Matrix" } ] }, { "question": "Who owns verification when AI does the work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-owns-verification-when-ai-does-the-work", "note": "In most organisations, nobody. It is not in a job description, a budget line or an org chart.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should decision rights be allocated?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-ai-decision-rights-be-allocated", "note": "By naming who recommends, inputs, agrees, decides and executes. AI can hold several of those roles and not the decide role, because deciding carries answerability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should a CHRO do first?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/chro-guide-to-ai", "note": "Not procurement. The first move is knowing which capabilities the organisation cannot afford to lose.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you measure AI adoption properly?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-measure-ai-adoption-properly", "note": "Not by activity, and not by asking people. In the one randomised trial that checked, self-reported time saved had the wrong sign.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "mckinsey-state-of-ai-2025", "title": "The State of AI: Global Survey", "by": "McKinsey and Company, QuantumBlack", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai", "contributes": "Adoption at 88 per cent alongside nearly two thirds not yet scaling is the clearest demonstration available that adoption and effect are different measurements.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "Large multi-country sample and a consistent annual series. COMMERCIAL INTEREST: McKinsey sells AI transformation work, and a scaling gap is a market. Self-reported by executives about their own organisations, and EBIT attribution to any single cause is an opinion rather than an accounting fact." }, { "id": "bick-deming-what-work-2026", "title": "What Work Does Generative AI Do?", "by": "Bick, A., Blandin, A., Deming, D. and Schumacher, T.", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/system-research-st-louis-fed/2026/07/what-work-does-generative-ai-do/", "contributes": "The distinction made empirically: adoption reaches 80 per cent of occupations while staying below half of workers within most tasks, so a single adoption number can be true and meaningless at once.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Nationally representative survey rather than one platform's traffic, with David Deming among the authors. A working paper rather than a peer-reviewed article, US only, and self-reported use." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "AI for AI's sake", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/ai-for-ais-sake", "adds": "Argues the presence of AI in a product tells you nothing about whether it improved, which is the adoption-versus-effect distinction in miniature.", "coinage": "AI for AI's sake" } ] }, { "question": "What does an AI-capable manager do differently?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-does-an-ai-capable-manager-do-differently", "note": "Not use the tools more. Six habits, each traced to a measured result: allocate the task before the tool, keep some work unaided, count disagreements, protect the rungs, read the source, treat confidence as a symptom.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you write an AI use policy that works?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-write-an-ai-use-policy-that-works", "note": "Most are unenforceable and everyone involved knows it. Six elements that survive every model release, and one test that beats legal review.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Rules Before Tools", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/rules-before-tools", "adds": "Argues the policy is downstream of the thing that actually matters: decision rights, named owners and a data backbone. Get those wrong and no policy wording rescues it.", "coinage": "Evaluation debt, the integration tax, shadow-AI amnesty" } ] }, { "question": "Should leaders use AI themselves?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Open, and the executives-consuming-machine-summaries problem sits underneath it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is capability debt?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "Capability an organisation has stopped maintaining but still assumes it has. It comes due when the system fails or the question is novel.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI a change management problem?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-transformation-not-change-mangement-problem", "note": "No, and treating it as one is why so many programmes produce activity without capability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What goes wrong in AI transformations?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/common-ai-transformation-challenges", "note": "The same things, repeatedly, and almost none of them are technical.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What evidence should a board demand before scaling an AI pilot?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-a-board-ask-about-ai", "note": "Twelve questions, each paired with the answer that should worry you. Time saved is not on the list.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should leaders tell whether an AI programme is building capability or spending it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-a-capability-audit", "note": "Adoption reviews measure use; a capability audit measures what remains without the tool. The two can point opposite ways, which is the case worth finding.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should leaders respond when people quietly work around the AI policy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-to-do-when-people-work-around-the-ai-policy", "note": "Open, and the most honest signal a policy gives. Most are unenforceable and everyone involved knows it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why do employees hide their use of AI at work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-we-tell-employees-about-ai-and-headcount", "note": "Because the penalty is real and measured: in four PNAS experiments people who used AI were judged lazier and less competent, and 64 per cent of weekly users in Deloitte's 2026 UK survey feared their manager would decide the tool could do their job. The fear is about the leadership's intentions, which the leadership can state.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should a chief executive understand personally before approving AI deployment?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Open. Article 4 makes literacy a legal obligation without saying what a chief executive has to hold themselves.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who decides which human capabilities are worth preserving?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Open, and a governance question dressed as a technical one. It is currently decided by whoever chooses what to automate first.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is AI leadership?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-leadership", "note": "The allocation of judgement: which decisions the machine may make, which stay human, who answers, and what people must stay capable of. Not a technical role.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does an AI strategy actually have to contain?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/rules-before-tools", "note": "Four layers and ten rules, written before another tool is bought. The August 2025 essay, in full, with dated notes on what has moved.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI-first a strategy or a slogan?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-ai-first-a-strategy-or-a-slogan", "note": "A preference order for one decision. Shopify published it and held; Duolingo declared it and retreated in a month. What the phrase leaves undecided.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happened to the companies that cut staff for AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happened-to-companies-that-cut-staff-for-ai", "note": "Klarna cut and rehired, Duolingo declared and retreated, IBM cut and reinvested, Shopify froze and held. The cut was never the decision that mattered.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do you need to be technical to lead AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-you-need-to-be-technical-to-lead-ai", "note": "No. The decisions that are a leader's are about accountability, capability and governance. What fluency is for, and what happens to leaders who delegate the judging.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it true that 95 per cent of AI pilots fail?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-it-true-that-95-per-cent-of-ai-pilots-fail", "note": "The 95 rests on 52 interviews, the 80 is a cited estimate, the 40 is a forecast. All three put the failure in the organisation, not the model.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between AI governance and AI leadership?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-governance-versus-ai-leadership", "note": "Governance checks decisions that have been made. Leadership makes them. Most organisations built the first and are waiting for it to produce the second.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is our AI policy actually enforceable?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-write-an-ai-use-policy-that-works", "note": "Most are not, and everyone involved knows it. Six elements that survive every model release.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are we legally required to do now?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-meaningful-human-oversight", "note": "Article 4 on literacy since February 2025, Article 14 on oversight since August 2026. Not legal advice, and the guidance does not exist yet.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we allocate AI decision rights?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-ai-decision-rights-be-allocated", "note": "State for each decision whether the system recommends, decides within limits, or executes. Absent that, the decide role has been given away by default.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you audit an AI-assisted decision?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-audit-an-ai-assisted-decision", "note": "Article 12 requires the log. Article 14 does not require per-decision review, except for biometric identification, which almost everyone gets wrong.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "AI Risk Management Framework 1.0 and Playbook", "by": "US National Institute of Standards and Technology", "url": "https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework", "why": "The Playbook sets out risk process in operational detail, including the five conditions at MANAGE 2.4 for disengaging a system.", "their_limits": "Voluntary, confers no legal status, and specifies what should exist rather than whether it functions." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can an AI safety evaluator paid by the company it evaluates be independent?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-an-ai-safety-evaluator-paid-by-the-company-be-independent", "note": "Only on conditions the company does not set alone. Anthropic named Accenture its first embedded evaluator on 18 September 2026 and more than a hundred researchers published five minimum conditions the same day; the announcement meets access and transparency on paper and leaves independence, retaliation and diversity open. Audit's regulator found in 2019 that a checker chosen and paid by the checked is the structural flaw.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is an embedded AI evaluator?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-an-ai-safety-evaluator-paid-by-the-company-be-independent", "note": "An outside organisation given employee-level access inside an AI company to test its models and check its safety practices, proposed in Dario Amodei's September 2026 essay and matched by Sam Altman on X. The first named one is Accenture, through Faculty, funded by Anthropic; what it may publish and who protects it are not stated in the announcement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do AI agents in companies act without real-time human oversight?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-an-ai-kill-switch", "note": "Mostly, on the executives' own account: 85 per cent of senior AI decision-makers at large US listed companies using agentic AI told EY in mid-2026 that at least some systems execute actions without real-time human involvement, and 26 per cent could not detect an unauthorised agent. Self-report from 202 people, and 'no real-time involvement' is not the same as 'cannot be stopped'.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does the US military's AI near miss mean for my organisation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-the-military-ai-near-miss-means-for-your-organisation", "note": "That a model's output, once rewritten in the house format, is read with the house's authority, and nothing in most decision chains records that a model wrote it. CNN's account of 18 September 2026 is unconfirmed by the Pentagon; the repair it points to, a provenance line and a named person who may halt on it, applies to any organisation that pastes model output into its own templates.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What AI risks could be material to this company?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and materiality is the operative word. Most AI risk registers list generic harms rather than the two or three exposures that could actually move this company's numbers or licence to operate. The generic list is easier to write and does not help a board prioritise.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is our appetite for AI risk?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Partly answered through the machinery: appetite is meaningful only where a threshold and a named owner exist. What is not answered is how to express appetite for a technology whose failure modes are not yet enumerated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which AI decisions should come to the board?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Partly answered. The defensible line is not size of spend but reversibility and whether the decision changes what the organisation can do unaided. Most escalation criteria use spend, which is the wrong axis.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should management report to the board about AI every quarter?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Answered. The declared augmentation-or-replacement position annually, the capability floor with an owner and a date, decision rights in writing, reversal thresholds, and one reconstructed decision. If the paper reports adoption rates and hours saved, the board is being shown procurement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What would an effective board AI dashboard contain?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Partly answered, with a caution. The agenda items are known; turning them into a dashboard risks converting the one question that resists metrics, whether anybody got better at anything, into a number that does not measure it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does the board know management's claims about AI are true?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-does-a-board-know-managements-claims-about-ai-are-true", "note": "Open, and the assurance question underneath most of this territory. Every other material claim to a board has an independent check behind it. AI claims mostly do not, and the people best placed to verify them report to the people making them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does the board need independent assurance over AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-does-a-board-know-managements-claims-about-ai-are-true", "note": "Open. Internal audit is the obvious home and is rarely resourced for it. The harder problem is that assuring an AI system requires the competence to evaluate it, which is scarce in exactly the third line.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who audits our AI systems?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-audit-an-ai-assisted-decision", "note": "Partly answered on method. The organisational answer is usually nobody in particular, and the capability question sits in none of the three lines of defence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we know our AI controls actually work?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Partly answered. This is the estate's central governance argument: a control that exists, is documented, has an owner and would not catch anything is drift in its governance form. The only test is whether it has ever fired.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What would constitute a serious AI incident?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-counts-as-a-serious-ai-incident", "note": "Open, and the definitional work has barely been done. Cyber has agreed severity language after twenty years; AI has none, which means incidents get classified into existing categories and the pattern never becomes visible.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when an AI incident occurs?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-counts-as-a-serious-ai-incident", "note": "Open. The parts that exist elsewhere, escalation, containment, disclosure, are transferable. What is not transferable is deciding whether to keep running a system that was mostly right.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should the board do about the September 2026 AI safety warnings?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-a-board-do-about-the-ai-safety-warnings", "note": "Five decisions that hold whatever the odds: which decisions machines may make in the company's name, who can stop each system, what people must remain able to do unaided, how the board would find out, and what management's assurances rest on.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do we have a kill switch for the AI we have deployed?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-an-ai-kill-switch", "note": "Usually a vendor change request and a week. Being able to stop a system is a technical fact; being willing to, mid-quarter, is a leadership fact, and it should be rehearsed before it is needed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who assures the AI in our decisions, and are they independent of the people who bought it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-an-ai-safety-evaluator-paid-by-the-company-be-independent", "note": "Ask each assurer the five conditions the AI Evaluator Forum put to the frontier labs on 18 September 2026: who selected you, who pays you, what may you publish without our consent, what happens to you if we dislike the answer, and what can you see. The CMA's 2019 audit study found selection and payment by the checked to be the structural flaw even under statute; an assurer who cannot answer all five is a second copy of management's self-report.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Could an AI-written document reach our decision-makers without anyone knowing where it came from?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-the-military-ai-near-miss-means-for-your-organisation", "note": "In most organisations, yes, because output pasted into the house template carries the house's authority and no line records the tool. The US military's near miss reported by CNN on 18 September 2026 is the case in point. The fix is a provenance line on every AI-assisted document and a named person at each stage who may halt on it without penalty.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How many AI decisions an hour is our human oversight actually checking?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/can-a-human-approve-an-ai-decision-at-machine-speed", "note": "Decisions per hour, times the minutes a real check takes, against the attention available. Where the first exceeds the second the approval is a sample, and the board should know the sampling rate and who owns the decisions that were not checked.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do the rogue agent incidents mean for our own agent deployments?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-the-rogue-ai-agent-incidents-mean-for-your-organisation", "note": "The reported incidents ran with guardrails disabled, monitoring not enabled, or systems left connected by mistake. Scope, stop, monitoring on by default and a named owner are the four things to settle before the first agent.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which AI failures must be reported to the board?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-counts-as-a-serious-ai-incident", "note": "Open, and the reporting threshold has a perverse property: the failures worth escalating are the quiet, systematic ones, and the ones that get escalated are the loud, visible ones.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI oversight sit with the full board or a committee?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-ai-oversight-sit-with-the-full-board-or-a-committee", "note": "Open, and genuinely contested. A committee gets depth and creates the impression the rest of the board need not engage. The full board gets engagement without the time to go deep. The audit-committee default imports a compliance frame onto a strategy question.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does our board have enough AI expertise?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-we-appoint-a-director-with-ai-expertise", "note": "Open, and usually the wrong question. What a board needs is enough understanding to tell a real control from a described one, which is not the same as technical depth and is not obtained by appointing one specialist.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "CAIO - Chief AI Officer", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/caio-chief-ai-officer", "adds": "On AI board members: the machines will be in the boardroom as tools used by humans, and anything else is marketing.", "coinage": "Fractional CAIOs" } ] }, { "question": "Should we appoint a director with AI expertise?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-we-appoint-a-director-with-ai-expertise", "note": "Open, and the cyber precedent is not encouraging. Appointing a single expert tends to concentrate rather than raise competence, and the rest of the board defers on exactly the questions it should be asking.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should directors themselves use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-board-oversight-of-ai-looks-like", "note": "Answered, and the answer is yes but not for productivity. A director who has never watched a model produce a confident, wrong answer in their own domain has no calibration for the risk they are overseeing. Note the measurement gap: PwC has 35% of directors self-reporting AI in oversight, while Deloitte's governance professionals were largely unsure whether their directors use it at all.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "Board Practices Quarterly: How boards are using AI today", "by": "Deloitte Center for Board Effectiveness", "url": "https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/programs/center-for-board-effectiveness/articles/board-of-director-ai-use.html", "why": "Measured board practice rather than advice about it, including how much of it is happening without board-specific policy.", "their_limits": "Governance professionals reporting on their boards rather than directors reporting on themselves, and small. Respondents were frequently unsure whether their directors use AI at all." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should directors put confidential board papers into AI systems?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-directors-put-board-papers-into-ai", "note": "Open, and the one question here with an immediate practical answer: not into public tools. PwC's guidance says so directly. What remains open is the enterprise case, where confidentiality is contractual and the residual question is privilege and discoverability.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can a director rely on an AI-generated summary of a board paper?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-directors-put-board-papers-into-ai", "note": "Open, and the sharpest question in the cluster. Ayinde established that the duty to verify does not transfer to whoever used the tool, and that it travels upward. Applying that to a director who read a summary rather than the paper is untested and uncomfortable. The Deloitte survey found summarising board materials is one of the most common uses.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should AI use in board decision-making be recorded?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-decision-provenance", "note": "Partial from 14 September 2026. There is a concept for the record and no board practice built on it: decision provenance, proposed by Singh, Cobbe and Norval in 2019, logs the inputs, the decision and its downstream effects without attempting to explain any reasoning. Minutes record decisions and dissent, not the provenance of a director's understanding. Whether that needs to change is the question, and the answer has litigation consequences nobody wants to be first to discover.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Could using AI change a director's duties?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and a question for counsel rather than for this estate. The duty to exercise independent judgement and reasonable care is jurisdictional. What can be said is that Ayinde made a professional verification duty non-delegable and upward-travelling, and no reported case yet applies that reasoning to directors.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should the board oversee AI used by suppliers and third parties?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the gap most likely to produce the first governance failure. Third-party risk processes ask whether a supplier has a policy. They do not ask whether the supplier's AI use is eroding the capability you are buying from them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should AI change our approach to mergers and acquisitions?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-capability-should-we-look-for-when-acquiring-a-company", "note": "Open. Diligence measures systems, licences and talent. Nobody yet diligences whether a target's people can still do the work unaided, which on this estate's argument is the thing most likely to be quietly missing from what you are buying.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What AI capability should we look for when acquiring a company?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-capability-should-we-look-for-when-acquiring-a-company", "note": "Open, and the answer is probably not the models or the tooling, which are purchasable. The durable asset is proprietary data and the judgement to use it, neither of which appears cleanly on a balance sheet.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to continuity planning if AI becomes critical infrastructure?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Continuity plans assume a manual fallback staffed by people who know the manual process. That assumption is the one this research questions, and it sits in plans nobody has revisited.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are the people our stakeholders listen to saying about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-leaders-say-about-ai", "note": "Almost all of them, from the King to the Pope to the central banks, say AI must remain under human control, and almost none says which decisions or who can stop it. The register of 125 verified quotations lets a board read the line that will be quoted at it before it is, and the gap in every one of them is the board's own question: which decisions a machine may make in our name.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the AI Memo Test?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-ai-memo-test", "note": "The AI Memo Test is a three-question self-assessment for an organisation: whether tool fluency is a basic requirement across roles, whether job descriptions avoid tasks software already handles, and whether managers are accountable for s...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "organisations", "name": "Organisations", "description": "Redesigning jobs, teams and decisions without losing capability.", "questions": [ { "question": "Who should own AI strategy in an organisation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Open, and the placement is usually inherited rather than decided. Transformation, process and technology each own a real part of it and none owns the judgement question.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Rules Before Tools", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/rules-before-tools", "adds": "The case for fixing rules, layers and accountability before selecting tools, which is the same argument the research page makes from the other end.", "coinage": "Evaluation debt, the integration tax, shadow-AI amnesty" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "CAIO - Chief AI Officer", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/caio-chief-ai-officer", "adds": "Argues most companies do not need a Chief AI Officer because the capability is already distributed, which is the March 2024 answer to a question the estate now treats at length.", "coinage": "Fractional CAIOs" } ] }, { "question": "Is AI a technology strategy or a people strategy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "It is filed as the first and behaves like the second. That mismatch explains a good deal of stalled work.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does it mean if AI sits under operations rather than strategy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Open, and revealing. Organisations that file people under operations tend to file AI there too, and the consequence is that nobody senior is accountable for what people can still do.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI an augmentation play or a replacement play?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "The question underneath most AI strategy arguments, and one that is very rarely asked out loud. Almost every disagreement about ownership is really a disagreement about this.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can an organisation pursue augmentation and replacement at the same time?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Open. They are often run in parallel by different functions with different targets, which is how an organisation ends up with two AI strategies and one budget.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you tell which one your organisation is actually pursuing?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Read the business case rather than the announcement. If the benefit is headcount, the answer is replacement whatever the language says.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Drift vs Design", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/drift-vs-design", "adds": "The organisational version of the drift argument, written for people who have to answer it in a room rather than on a page.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What is missing from most AI strategies?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "A capability plan. Nearly every strategy has tooling, governance and adoption metrics, and no account of what people must still be able to do.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you fix an AI strategy that has gone wrong?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/common-ai-transformation-challenges", "note": "Start by establishing which of the failures you actually have, because the loudest one is rarely the real one and the fixes are not interchangeable.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Our AI programme stalled. Is that a technology problem or a capability one?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-transformation-not-change-mangement-problem", "note": "Usually neither of the two things it gets blamed on. Stalls tend to sit where nobody can say what the work is now for.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you know an AI strategy is working?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-measure-ai-adoption-properly", "note": "Not from adoption. The question a dashboard should answer is whether anybody got better at anything, and most cannot.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who should own AI implementation inside an organisation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Open, and the source of a great deal of stalled work. Ownership tends to sit with whoever bought the tools rather than whoever carries the consequences.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI implementation sit with IT, transformation or the business?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Open. Each placement fails differently, and the failure mode is predictable from the placement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does a good AI implementation team look like?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Open. The pattern worth testing is whether anyone on it is accountable for capability rather than for delivery.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When should we stop or reverse an AI deployment?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/deployment-is-not-a-ratchet", "note": "Decide the thresholds while everyone is still pleased with it. The people defending a decision cannot set them afterwards.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "nist-ai-rmf", "title": "Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0)", "by": "National Institute of Standards and Technology", "year": 2023, "url": "https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework", "contributes": "MANAGE 2.4 names five conditions for disengaging a system, which is the only published list of its kind.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Official framework, widely adopted as a de facto standard. Voluntary and process-oriented; it describes what to do rather than evidencing what works. Currently under revision." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why do AI pilots succeed and rollouts fail?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Open, and widely observed. The candidate explanation worth testing is that pilots are staffed by people who already had the judgement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Rules Before Tools", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/rules-before-tools", "adds": "Names the unglamorous causes rather than the technological ones, and is where the integration tax and evaluation debt are set out.", "coinage": "Evaluation debt, the integration tax, shadow-AI amnesty" } ] }, { "question": "What is an AI workforce strategy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-workforce-strategy", "note": "A plan for which capabilities the organisation builds, buys, keeps and deliberately lets go. Most are procurement documents.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you keep juniors when AI does their work?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "Open, and a serious answer has to include why the business case is hard to make.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are the missing rungs?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "The steps people used to climb to competence, which happen to be the ones most easily automated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Missing Rungs: What Nobody Will Tell You About AI and Your Job", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-missing-rungs-what-nobody-will", "adds": "The essay the term came from, and it makes the case in the order a reader actually experiences it: the saving arrives now, the shortage of people who can do senior work arrives about a decade later.", "coinage": "The missing rungs" } ] }, { "question": "What are missed reps?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-missed-reps-of-ai-seniority", "note": "The repetitions that never happened, and the judgement that therefore never formed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI reduce or increase headcount?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-workforce-strategy", "note": "The measured aggregate effects so far are much smaller than the discussion implies. Firm-level adoption is lower than individual use.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you avoid capability debt?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "By deciding what you are keeping before you decide what you are automating. That ordering is the whole intervention.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is usage theatre?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/usage-theatre", "note": "Activity that looks like transformation and is measured as transformation, without any capability changing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "AI for AI's sake", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/ai-for-ais-sake", "adds": "The consumer-product version of the same failure: AI bolted onto things that did not need it, usually for marketing or patent defence.", "coinage": "AI for AI's sake" } ] }, { "question": "How do you brief a team when AI drafts everything?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-does-to-a-team", "note": "Open. When the first draft is close to free, the brief carries more weight than it used to, because it becomes the main place where thinking is specified rather than assumed. What that means in practice has not been studied.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI change team decision-making?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-does-to-a-team", "note": "Open, and the group version of the convergence finding is unstudied.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you audit an AI-assisted decision?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-audit-an-ai-assisted-decision", "note": "Article 12 requires the log. Article 14 does not require per-decision review, except for biometric identification, which almost everyone gets wrong.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "AI Risk Management Framework 1.0 and Playbook", "by": "US National Institute of Standards and Technology", "url": "https://www.nist.gov/itl/ai-risk-management-framework", "why": "The Playbook sets out risk process in operational detail, including the five conditions at MANAGE 2.4 for disengaging a system.", "their_limits": "Voluntary, confers no legal status, and specifies what should exist rather than whether it functions." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does good AI adoption look like a year in?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "The maturity question, and it deserves an answer that is not a maturity model.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should small organisations approach AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Open. The research estate over-indexes on large employers, including here.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "openai-frontier-2026", "title": "Work at the Frontier: How AI is Expanding What People Do at Work", "by": "OpenAI Economic Research", "year": 2026, "url": "https://openai.com/index/how-ai-is-expanding-what-people-do-at-work/", "contributes": "Crossover is higher in small workspaces, 18.9 per cent at two to five seats against 16.3 per cent above a hundred, which fits the argument that small organisations have no specialist to hand the work to.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "Large-sample behavioural data of a kind nobody outside a model provider can obtain, and the first real measurement of task crossover. COMMERCIAL INTEREST: OpenAI benefits from the finding that its product expands what workers can do. It is usage data, so it shows what people ASKED for, not whether the answer was any good or whether the user could tell." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should the public sector approach AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-the-public-sector", "note": "By separating the administrative case from the deciding case, which the headline figures do not. Both flagship UK numbers are self-reported, and the productivity estimate underneath the policy was never tested for feasibility or cost.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do four generations work together on AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/four-generations-and-ai", "note": "Each generation built capability under different constraints, and the differences are more useful than the stereotypes.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is cognitive debt?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/cognitive-debt-and-capability-debt", "note": "MIT's term for reliance on AI replacing the effortful thinking that builds independent capability. The phrase appears four times in a 216-page preprint and its authors never claim to have coined it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between cognitive debt and capability debt?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/cognitive-debt-and-capability-debt", "note": "Cognitive debt is what happens inside one head. Capability debt is what happens to an organisation. The gap between them is where the mechanism sits.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who coined the term capability debt?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/cognitive-debt-and-capability-debt", "note": "Nobody has claimed it, including Rohde, who defines it in print, and including this research.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is human capability in the age of AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-capability-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "Whether an organisation still holds the judgement, practice and accountability it depends on as machines absorb the work those things were built from.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you measure human capability in an organisation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-capability-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "Six dimensions: judgement, practice, verification, accountability, origination and resilience. A proposed structure, not yet a validated instrument.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between AI adoption and human capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-capability-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "Adoption measures whether the tools are used. Capability asks what happened to the thinking. Both can move at once, in opposite directions.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI hype or doom?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/neither-ai-hype-nor-doom", "note": "Neither, and the two positions need each other more than either admits.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Crossing", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-crossing", "adds": "Makes the case that hope is a precondition for acting well rather than a temperament, which is the estate's stance stated without hedging.", "coinage": "The SuperSkills Ladder" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Post Peak ChatGPT Hype", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/post-peak-chatgpt-hype", "adds": "A dated position rather than a retrospective one: hype peaked, category ownership held, written into the middle of the AI-winter talk of autumn 2023.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "AGI", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/agi", "adds": "Neither, on this account. AGI arrives and the governance question outranks the capability question, with reasoning at the point of use named as what makes short timelines newly credible.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "When should an organisation reverse or constrain an AI deployment?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/deployment-is-not-a-ratchet", "note": "When the assumptions under which it was approved stop holding. NIST names five conditions and treats the thresholds as continual monitoring rather than a one-off gate.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does responsible de-automation look like?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-invisible-work-of-oversight", "note": "Partial. Restoring responsibility with the information, practice, staffing and authority to exercise it. The principle is established in human factors; no dose is.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How quickly can an organisation recover unaided capability after a system fails?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/deployment-is-not-a-ratchet", "note": "Partial, and slower than expected. Relearning beats learning for individuals at every interval tested, never on professional judgement, and never on a routine several people ran together.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How often should organisations practise working without AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/deployment-is-not-a-ratchet", "note": "Partial. Set by the decay rate rather than the calendar. Aviation is the only industry that schedules it, from its own accident history rather than anything generalisable.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when a vendor changes the model underneath a workflow?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/preserving-capability-across-vendors", "note": "Partial. Behaviour changes without the buyer deciding anything, and informal tuning around the old failure modes silently expires. Tight coupling to a component you cannot inspect.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is an organisation's minimum viable human capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-a-capability-audit", "note": "Enough to recognise failure, hold critical operations, decide the cases outside the system's competence and recover control. A shape, not a percentage.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much redundancy should an AI-dependent organisation keep?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/deployment-is-not-a-ratchet", "note": "Partial. Enough to detect failure, hold critical operations and recover. No universal percentage exists, and Perrow warns that another automated safeguard can reduce safety.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is a capability audit?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-a-capability-audit", "note": "A proposed SuperSkills method, labelled as one rather than as a standard. What people can still do when the assistance is removed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "bcg-deskilling-2026", "title": "When Everyone Uses AI, Companies Risk Losing Critical Skills", "by": "BCG Henderson Institute", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.bcg.com/publications/2026/when-everyone-uses-ai-companies-risk-critical-skills", "contributes": "Corporate framing of the same instrument, useful because it is the vocabulary an executive audience already recognises.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Executive survey, and the base is small: seventy C-suite and senior leaders. Directionally interesting, statistically light." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I know if my organisation is already in capability debt?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "Five symptoms, none of which appear in output metrics. The diagnostic is what happens when the tool is removed, not how much it is used.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI make organisations smaller but more fragile?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Open, and the trade nobody prices. Headcount is measured continuously and fragility is measured after.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you preserve capability when the work is spread across vendors?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/preserving-capability-across-vendors", "note": "Keep enough to specify the work, judge it, handle exceptions and replace the supplier. Prahalad and Hamel wrote this in 1990 about manufacturing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI increase organisational sycophancy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-ai-does-to-a-team", "note": "Open, and the organisational version of a measured individual effect. If a model optimises for the reader's approval, a report drafted for a known audience inherits that.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should AI change our workforce plan?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-workforce-strategy", "note": "Partly answered. The estate's position is that a workforce plan must name which capabilities it intends to keep, not only which roles it intends to fill. SHRM's 2026 survey of more than 1,900 HR professionals found 39% reporting shifted responsibilities against 7% reporting displacement, which if it holds means the planning problem is redesign rather than reduction.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How many people will we need in three years because of AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and nobody can tell you. Three independent measurements find no general headcount effect yet. Any three-year number is a policy choice presented as a forecast. Say so in the room where the number gets set.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which roles should we grow, shrink, redesign or remove?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-workforce-strategy", "note": "Partly answered. The sharpest available lens is Autor and Thompson: automation that removes the less expert tasks raises wages and cuts employment, while removing the expert tasks does the opposite. Which half of a role you keep decides whether it appreciates or commoditises.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should AI change our organisation structure?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Partly answered on the observed direction, which is pyramids becoming inverted triangles or diamonds with little arriving at the bottom. What is not answered is whether that shape is stable, and the succession arithmetic suggests it is not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will AI reduce the number of management layers we need?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Partly answered, with the limit named: nothing measured exists in this corpus on what AI does to management layers. Anyone confident about this is extrapolating.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should managers be responsible for more people when they have AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and it depends entirely on which managerial function you think AI assists. It helps with routing information and scheduling. It does not help with developing a person, which is the part that does not scale and the part that becomes scarce as the junior pipeline thins.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should AI change spans of control?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the same question with a number attached. Widening spans on the strength of AI assumes the binding constraint was administrative rather than developmental.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should we redesign job descriptions for AI-assisted work?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and mostly done badly by adding 'uses AI tools' to an unchanged description. The real redesign question is which tasks the role must retain in order to remain a role someone can grow through.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should we redesign our job architecture for AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Partly answered at the level of a single job. The architecture question is harder: levels and grades encode an assumed progression of difficulty, and if AI removes the lower rungs the levels stop describing a path.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which jobs should we redesign before we consider redundancies?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and posed in the right order, which is unusual. Bainbridge's warning applies: automating the routine parts leaves the human the hardest residue while removing the practice that built the competence for it. A redesigned job is often a harder job.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When should we redeploy people rather than remove roles?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The economic case is usually framed as retention cost versus severance cost. The capability case is different and rarely made: the person carries the tacit knowledge of how the work was done before, which is the thing that cannot be rebuilt by hiring.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should we identify employees whose jobs are most likely to change?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Task-level exposure indices exist and are the right unit of analysis, but applying a published index to a specific organisation's actual jobs is a step almost nobody takes, and exposure is not the same as impact.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should we consult employees when AI changes their jobs?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and partly a legal question that varies by jurisdiction. The consultation frameworks assume a proposal with a defined end state, and AI-driven change usually does not have one, which makes existing processes fit badly.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should we tell employees about our intentions for AI and headcount?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-we-tell-employees-about-ai-and-headcount", "note": "Two things that bind the leadership rather than the worker: which decisions a machine may make in the organisation's name, and the headcount position declared by domain and dated, including whether time saved by AI will be used as evidence in a restructuring. Deloitte's 2026 survey of 25,000 UK workers found 31 per cent concealing their use and 64 per cent of weekly users afraid their manager will decide AI can do their job, so silence is already read as the worst case.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How transparent should we be about which jobs AI may affect?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Transparency has a cost that is rarely stated: naming a role as exposed can trigger the departure of the people you most need to manage the transition.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we maintain trust when employees think AI is being introduced to replace them?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-we-tell-employees-about-ai-and-headcount", "note": "Not by messaging. Trust tracks whether the declared position and the business case agree: if the paper says augmentation and the case counts headcount, people work out which is real and hide their use, which is what the 2025 PNAS experiments on the social penalty for using AI and the 2026 Deloitte UK survey both find. Declare the position by domain, date it, be held to it, and make declaring use safe for a stated period so the organisation can see what is being delegated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should we involve employees in deciding how AI changes their work?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and there is a practical argument for it beyond fairness: the people doing the work know which parts were building competence and which were waste, and that distinction is invisible from above.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is Human Reserved?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-human-reserved", "note": "Human Reserved is Bill Gates's term for work deliberately set aside for people only, by analogy with nature reserves: places we could develop but choose not to because the loss would be too great.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are Configurations capacitantes and aliénantes?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-are-capacitating-configurations", "note": "Capacitating and alienating configurations are the two outcomes an AI deployment can produce. Where an organisational compromise is reached, the arrangement increases human aptitude and skill. Where it fails, workers lose command of the ...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is Conflit de rationalité?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "A conflict of rationalities is the unresolved disagreement between what an organisation wants from an AI system and what the work actually requires. Whether a compromise is reached decides whether the result builds capability or removes it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are learning-conducive work environments?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Learning-conducive work environments are workplaces designed so that continuous learning and the use of skills happen through the work itself rather than through separate training.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is Komplementäre Arbeitsgestaltung?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Complementary work design treats human and machine complementarity as permanent and functional, grounded in structural limits of automation rather than in the current weakness of models.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is obligation to justify?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The obligation to justify is Cedefop's proposal that employers should have to give reasons for introducing AI into a workplace.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is distributed de-skilling?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-deskilling", "note": "Distributed de-skilling is BCG's term for the collective erosion of human skills across an organisation that undermines its intelligence and resilience over time.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are aI-off zones?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "AI-off zones are BCG's term for tasks an organisation deliberately designates as off limits to AI, where originality, ethical judgement or synthesis matter most.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is capability masking?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "Capability masking is the appearance that organisational capability has been replaced by AI while dependence on skilled human labour actually remains, which supports hiring restraint while the cost accumulates.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is capability audit?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-a-capability-audit", "note": "A structured assessment of whether an organisation still possesses the human knowledge, judgement and practical ability its operations depend on, tested by removing assistance rather than by surveying confidence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is drift versus design?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/design-versus-drift", "note": "Drift is the gradual outsourcing of choice to whatever is smoothest, until decisions that were once made are simply followed. Design is the opposite move: deciding in advance where human judgement has to remain, and accepting the frictio...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is shift left?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Shift left means moving decisions closer to their source, removing the dilution that every handoff introduces.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to organisational knowledge when it goes into a private AI system?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-to-institutional-memory", "note": "It becomes more accessible without becoming more retained. Polanyi's point: the capability that produced the documents was never in them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who owns the prompts and corrections employees contribute?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and unresolved in law and in practice. Every correction is a person's expertise, encoded.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should never be put into an AI system?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The confidentiality answer is well covered; the capability answer, what you lose by externalising it, is not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should employees consent to workplace AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and distinct from disclosure. This is the organisation asking the employee, rather than the other way round.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when an AI system remembers an employee wrongly?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. A persistent inaccurate record about a person is a different problem from a wrong answer, and no process handles it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "talent", "name": "Talent", "description": "Graduates, apprentices, juniors, and how expertise gets made.", "questions": [ { "question": "Do graduates arrive less capable than they used to?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-juniors-become-senior", "note": "Open on the outcome and asserted far more confidently than the evidence allows, since no cohort has been followed from a first job into a senior role with the tool present throughout. What is documented is that the practice that used to build the capability is thinner.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI deskilling us or rescaling what counts as a valuable skill?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-deskilling-real", "note": "Both are measured, in different people. The strong claim that there is no deskilling fails against the Polish colonoscopy result; the rescaling claim survives as a question about which tasks were automated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which years of practice matter most for building judgement?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "The ones with real consequences and real feedback. Those are the rungs being automated first.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you tell a capable graduate from a well-tooled one?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/synthetic-seniority", "note": "Not from the output, which is the whole problem. It takes a task the tools cannot do and somebody senior enough to judge the answer.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Synthetic Seniority", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/synthetic-seniority", "adds": "The hiring version of the same problem, argued from the position of someone who has had to make the call.", "coinage": "Synthetic seniority" } ] }, { "question": "Should juniors be allowed AI from day one?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "The evidence supports a sequenced answer rather than a yes or no, and it puts most of the burden on whoever manages them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is the graduate job market changing because of AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/will-ai-replace-entry-level-jobs", "note": "The exposure signals are real across several countries. The causal evidence is not there yet, and this page says so.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What I Tell Parents About AI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-i-tell-parents-about-ai", "adds": "Takes the claim apart rather than repeating it, arguing part of the graduate-hiring story is cover for cuts that would have happened anyway.", "coinage": "The augmented mindset; ten, to a thousand, to one; the just-in-case folder" } ] }, { "question": "What is synthetic seniority?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/synthetic-seniority", "note": "The gap between output that looks senior and the judgement that normally produces it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Synthetic Seniority", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/synthetic-seniority", "adds": "Where the term was worked out, and the sharper half of it: the problem is not that the work looks better than the person could manage, it is that the person cannot tell whether it is any good.", "coinage": "Synthetic seniority" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Solving Synthetic Seniority", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/solving-synthetic-seniority", "adds": "The sharper, later version of the argument: AI supplies a seventy per cent floor, people read it as a ceiling, and the danger is the disappearance of anyone who can still tell that seventy is only seventy.", "coinage": "The last thirty per cent" } ] }, { "question": "How do you develop juniors now?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "By deciding which repetitions are development rather than cost. Most organisations have never made that distinction explicitly.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do apprenticeships still work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "Open, and the German and Swiss models deserve better than a passing mention.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "uk-ai-skills-life-work-2026", "title": "AI Skills for Life and Work", "by": "Ipsos, The Alan Turing Institute, University of Warwick and Perspective Economics, for DSIT and DCMS", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rd-science-and-analysis-programme-ai-skills-for-life-and-work", "contributes": "Employer survey evidence on stated AI skill demand, useful precisely because it is employer intent rather than outcome.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "An Ipsos-led consortium with the Alan Turing Institute and Warwick, using several methods on the same question, which is stronger than any single survey. Note the lag: the research completed in March 2025 and published in January 2026, so the fieldwork describes a period two model generations back." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who supervises work they cannot do themselves?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-supervises-work-they-cannot-do", "note": "Supervision has become approval, and no management system in common use can tell the difference.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "bainbridge-1983", "title": "Ironies of Automation", "by": "Bainbridge, L.", "year": 1983, "url": "https://ckrybus.com/static/papers/Bainbridge_1983_Automatica.pdf", "contributes": "The ironies stated in their original form. The operator is retained for the cases the automation cannot handle, and is the person the automation has left least practised.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Foundational theoretical paper, extensively validated in aviation and process control over four decades." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI widen or narrow the gap between best and worst?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-skills-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "It narrows performance gaps in several studies. Whether it narrows capability gaps is a different question and not the same finding.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does a career look like without a junior tier?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "Partly visible now: the Big Four cut graduate intake and cut partner promotions to a five-year low in the same period. Compression at both ends rather than a base that simply disappears.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you assess capability rather than output?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-assess-capability-rather-than-output", "note": "Structure roughly doubles predictive validity, observation needs about eight repetitions, and the .54 everyone quotes has been revised to .33.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "oecd-ai-capability-indicators-2025", "title": "OECD AI Capability Indicators: Technical Report", "by": "OECD", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-ai-capability-indicators-technical-report_9cdb3dd1-en.html", "contributes": "An attempt to build indicators for AI capability itself, which is the measurement problem this estate keeps running into from the human side.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional methodology report with expert elicitation. New and not yet widely validated; the scales are judgement-based rather than benchmark-derived." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Solving Synthetic Seniority", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/solving-synthetic-seniority", "adds": "The pen-and-paper brief that separated the fastest tool-first designer from everyone who had done the reps, which is the assessment argument made concrete rather than theoretical.", "coinage": "The last thirty per cent" } ] }, { "question": "Are we losing tacit knowledge?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-tacit-knowledge", "note": "Polanyi's concept. The form of knowledge most exposed by AI, because it is least likely to be in any training corpus.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is deliberate practice?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-deliberate-practice", "note": "The four conditions Ericsson specified, the re-analysis that cut the claim down, and Epstein on why it generalises badly outside kind environments.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does experience still count?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/staying-valuable-in-the-age-of-ai", "note": "Experience that produced judgement counts more. Experience that produced familiarity counts less than it used to.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you keep expertise in an organisation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-keep-expertise-in-an-organisation", "note": "Experts practising difficult work, getting feedback and teaching. Documentation holds the explicit part; Polanyi's point is that the rest was never written down.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "teece-1997", "title": "Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management", "by": "Teece, D. J., Pisano, G. and Shuen, A.", "year": 1997, "url": "https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199708)18:7<509::AID-SMJ882>3.0.CO;2-Z", "contributes": "Dynamic capabilities as the frame: what an organisation can reconfigure, rather than what it currently knows.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Theoretical synthesis. The construct has been criticised as difficult to operationalise and measure." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to the apprenticeship model?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "Open, and the closest thing to an official answer is Singapore's: IMDA warns that entry level tasks typically serve as the training ground for new staff. What replaces them is undecided.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should juniors use AI at all?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "Open, and the answer is almost certainly not a simple yes or no.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Solving Synthetic Seniority", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/solving-synthetic-seniority", "adds": "Answers it with a distinction rather than a rule: transactional work is safe to hand over, representative work never is, and the sequence that preserves judgement is human, then machine, then human.", "coinage": "The last thirty per cent" } ] }, { "question": "Why are there empty apprenticeship places and unplaced applicants at once?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "Germany had 84,400 young people without a place in 2025, the most since 2010, and 54,400 places unfilled in the same year. Matching, not volume, is the binding constraint.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Did the UK cut degree apprenticeship funding?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "Only at level 7, for those aged 22 and over, from January 2026. Level 6, the undergraduate degree apprenticeship, was untouched and has grown from about 6,400 starts to about 26,800.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "Assessment of AI capabilities and the impact on the UK labour market", "by": "UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology", "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessment-of-ai-capabilities-and-the-impact-on-the-uk-labour-market", "why": "The government's wider labour-market assessment around the funding question, and unusually candid about what its evidence cannot yet settle.", "their_limits": "Labour-market effects only. It is not attempting to describe human capability, and does not claim to." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are internships declining?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "Nobody knows, because no official body measures internship volume anywhere. A job board reports contraction and an employer association forecasts 3.9 per cent growth, and neither is a statistic.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Have consultancies inverted the pyramid?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "No, on the available evidence. Graduate intake fell across the Big Four and partner promotions fell to a five-year low at the same time. That is compression, and no firm publishes the grade data that would settle it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you preserve apprenticeship pathways when AI removes the junior work?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-apprenticeships-still-work", "note": "Germany shows funding and volume are not the constraint: record unplaced applicants and 54,400 empty places in the same year.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I run a team where AI drafts everything and the juniors never learn?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "Four rules for the junior and four for whoever manages them, because the first set alone puts the burden on the least powerful person.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does the organisation face a skill cliff when its experts retire?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. If judgement passed through shared work and the shared work is automated, the transfer channel closed before anyone retired.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are firms cutting junior jobs, or just not opening them?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "Not opening them. At firms adopting generative AI, junior separations FELL. Junior hiring fell about four times faster. Nobody is pushed off the ladder; the lower rungs stop being built. Unemployment figures cannot see a job that was never advertised.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which junior tasks disappear first?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "The exposed ones, measurable at task level rather than inferred. Mapping 355,000 job postings onto standardised tasks shows exposed tasks being written out of junior job descriptions specifically, while the same tasks hold or grow in senior ones.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do the same firms cut senior roles too?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/will-ai-replace-entry-level-jobs", "note": "No, and that asymmetry is the finding. In firms where junior employment fell about 9 per cent against non-adopters, senior employment showed no comparable break and in exposed occupations kept rising.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are juniors promoted faster now that AI does the junior work?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-juniors-become-senior", "note": "Slightly. Promotion rates rose by 0.033 percentage points against a base of 0.82 per cent, statistically significant and practically tiny. Fewer juniors, marginally quicker promotion, and nothing yet on whether those promoted are ready.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How would you actually prove AI is removing entry-level work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "Compare firms that adopted against firms that did not, inside the same industry and period, splitting by seniority. National hiring statistics cannot do this because everything moves at once. It took resume data on 281,111 firms to separate the two.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "If AI raises productivity, why would junior hiring fall rather than rise?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "Because a productivity gain only raises demand for junior labour if tasks substitute for each other. Where they complement, the same gain cuts junior demand. That is the theoretical answer and it is a model, not a measurement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are employers just relabelling junior jobs rather than cutting them?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/synthetic-seniority", "note": "Tested and rejected. Job-title keyword distributions show no differential shift at adopting firms around the ChatGPT launch, so the fall is a real change in who is hired rather than a change in what the roles are called.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should AI change succession planning?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the most consequential unasked question in this territory. Succession assumes a pipeline that is being switched off at the bottom while the plans above it are unchanged.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Where will our next senior leaders come from if junior work disappears?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-juniors-become-senior", "note": "The missing rungs argument seen from inside the org chart. An organisation with no junior intake has no bench, and in ten years nobody to promote. Answered 6 September 2026: junior work was a by-product of senior workload, so the development it produced now has to be chosen, and the four things that still build a senior are on the page.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is our workforce being deskilled, or is AI just changing which skills we value?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-deskilling-real", "note": "Both have been measured, in different populations, so the question has to be asked role by role. Autor and Thompson give the test: automation that removed the less expert tasks raised wages and cut employment, and automation that removed the expert tasks did the reverse.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which roles are becoming succession risks because AI removed the development path?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "Partly answered on the mechanism. The organisational diagnostic does not exist: identifying which specific roles no longer have a route into them would be a genuinely new piece of work, doable with data most organisations already hold.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we identify the capabilities we will need before we need them?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and strategic workforce planning has always been weak here. What AI changes is the lead time: capability that used to accumulate as a by-product of doing the work now has to be deliberately built, which requires knowing what to build years ahead.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should we hire AI capability or develop it internally?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the framing hides the real choice. Hiring gets the tooling skill, which is not scarce and not durable. Developing gets domain judgement applied to the tools, which is scarce and slow. Most organisations buy the first and call it the second.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When is reskilling actually worth the investment?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/why-reskilling-programmes-mostly-fail", "note": "Partly answered on why programmes fail. The investment question is unanswered and harder, because it requires an honest view of how long the reskilled capability stays valuable.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we know whether reskilling worked?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/why-reskilling-programmes-mostly-fail", "note": "Partly answered. Completion rates measure attendance. The only real test is whether people can do something they could not do before, measured unaided, which almost no programme does because the result might be no.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should we do with employees whose roles disappear faster than they can retrain?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the question most likely to be answered by default rather than by decision. Skill acquisition has a floor on how fast it can go, and no amount of programme design removes it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is legitimate peripheral participation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-keep-expertise-in-an-organisation", "note": "Legitimate peripheral participation is how newcomers acquire competence: by doing real but peripheral work alongside practitioners, moving from the edge of a community of practice towards its centre.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are seniorised entry-level roles?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/will-ai-replace-entry-level-jobs", "note": "Seniorised entry-level roles are junior jobs that now demand senior human skills. PwC found entry-level roles most exposed to AI are seven times more likely to require leadership, creativity or face-to-face interaction.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the AI employment gap?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-ai-employment-gap", "note": "The AI employment gap is the Stanford Digital Economy Lab's finding that employment of workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations sits 19 per cent below where it would have been had it tracked their less-exposed peers, operating thr...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is borrowed competence?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Borrowed competence is McKinsey's term for capability that appears in the output but disappears when the tool is withdrawn.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the answer-key model?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The answer-key model is McKinsey's proposed training pattern in which the employee attempts the work first, the AI grades the attempt, and a manager reviews it with them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is learning by verifying?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Learning by verifying is Bain's claim that juniors learn by reviewing, stress-testing and catching errors in AI output, and that the repetitions per hour go up rather than down.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is oversight readiness?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-oversight-readiness", "note": "Oversight readiness is Google DeepMind's term for whether a future workforce will be able to judge the AI work it is nominally supervising, given that juniors are being deprived of the experience that builds strategic judgement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is curriculum-aware task routing?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Curriculum-aware task routing is Google DeepMind's proposal for systems that track a junior's skill progression and deliberately allocate tasks at the edge of their expanding competence, including work the system would otherwise have don...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the two-tier future?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "The two-tier future is the outcome financial services leaders fear most: lower-skilled people handling tasks AI is not set up for, a smaller group of experts training the system and handling exceptions, and no obvious bridge from the fir...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "everyday", "name": "Everyday life", "description": "The same questions, outside work, where most of the volume actually is.", "questions": [ { "question": "My teenager uses AI for everything. Is that different from my team doing it?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/using-ai-without-dependency", "note": "Less different than it feels. The mechanism is the same: which repetitions are being skipped, and whether anyone would notice.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "I set an AI policy at work. What would the same policy look like at home?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and worth thinking through. Most workplace policies are about disclosure and risk, and almost none about which practice to protect.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "My company encourages AI and my child’s school restricts it. Who is right?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/official-guidance-on-ai-in-education", "note": "Both, for their own settings. The school is protecting capability being built; the company is buying output already paid for.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I talk to my children about this without frightening them?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The honest framing is that the tools are useful and the practice is worth keeping, which is harder to say than either extreme.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What would I want my own child’s employer to do about this?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-juniors-use-ai", "note": "A useful test for any policy you are about to approve. Most people set a stricter bar for their own children than for other people’s.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is screen time the same argument as AI use?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-screen-time-the-same-argument-as-ai-use", "note": "No, and the difference is a variable rather than a tone. Screen-time work measures exposure with an instrument that correlates with logged use at r = 0.38, and across 355,358 adolescents finds at most 0.4 per cent of the variance. The capability question is about substitution. Przybylski's own group has published the warning against counting hours of AI.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are young people actually using AI differently?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-screen-time-the-same-argument-as-ai-use", "note": "Partly, and the answered half is negative. The measurement objection is settled: self-reported usage surveys are the wrong instrument, and the researchers who built the screen-time literature say so in print. Whether young people genuinely use AI differently in kind, rather than in reported hours, has not been measured by anyone.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it safe to use AI for therapy or advice?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-it-safe-to-use-ai-for-therapy", "note": "The trial that shows it works had humans reading every message, and the regulator has authorised none of it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Simulacra, Copying Humans and AGI", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/simulacra-copying-humans-and-agi", "adds": "Flags parasocial attachment as the risk to plan for rather than accuracy, two years before that became the mainstream safety concern.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Mental Health - GPT", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/mental-health-gpt", "adds": "Relays and endorses the finding that models add empathy while failing to hold therapeutic structure, in June 2024, a year before that became the standard safety result.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Should I let AI make personal decisions for me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-ai-make-personal-decisions-for-me", "note": "Advice from a model with no settled view still moves yours, disclosure does not reduce the effect, and 80 per cent believe they decided unaided.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I use AI to write personal messages?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-use-ai-to-write-personal-messages", "note": "The interpersonal penalty attaches to being suspected, not to using it. Suspicion tracks actual use at r=0.22, so the toll is levied close to at random.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Thing That Proves You're Human", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-thing-that-proves-youre-human", "adds": "Answers it more directly than the research page can: the artefact is not the point, being the author of it is, and automating it removes the only thing it was carrying.", "coinage": "Outsourced recognition" } ] }, { "question": "Does using AI change my creativity?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-ai-make-everyone-think-alike", "note": "At population level it narrows the range. At individual level the evidence says your output improves, and that is what makes it hard to notice.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I use AI for relationship advice?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and it needs care: there are cases where it genuinely helps and cases where it substitutes for a person who should be told.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI remember everything about me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-ai-remember-everything-about-me", "note": "Memory as convenience versus memory as leverage, which is a different question from privacy and less well covered.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Robot Roommate", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/robot-roommate", "adds": "Extends the question into the home, where the machine is present rather than summoned, and the data is domestic life itself.", "coinage": "The domestic singularity" } ] }, { "question": "Do I still need to remember things?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-i-still-need-to-remember-things", "note": "Offloading is not uniformly a loss: saving one file improved memory for the next. What memory is still for is noticing that an answer is wrong.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Multi-source Learning", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/multi-source-learning", "adds": "An explicit refusal of the know-less thesis in February 2024, arguing we need to learn more but differently, before the offloading literature made this contested.", "coinage": "Multi-source learning" } ] }, { "question": "Should I let AI summarise everything I read?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-ai-summarise-everything-i-read", "note": "Seven experiments, and the one that held the facts identical still found shallower learning and output three times more similar to everyone else's.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much should teenagers use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-much-should-teenagers-use-ai", "note": "The frequency question is the wrong one. One field experiment: marks up 48 per cent with the tool, 17 per cent below the control once it was removed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What I Tell Parents About AI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-i-tell-parents-about-ai", "adds": "Argues the metric is wrong. What matters is not hours but whether the social world is contracting from ten people to a thousand to one.", "coinage": "The augmented mindset; ten, to a thousand, to one; the just-in-case folder" } ] }, { "question": "Should I let AI write for me at all?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-at-the-start", "note": "It depends entirely on whether being the author is part of what the writing is for.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it bad to talk to AI when lonely?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "WATCH. Genuinely difficult, and it deserves evidence rather than instinct before anything is published.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I use AI to help with parenting decisions?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-raise-a-child-who-thinks-for-themselves", "note": "Partly answered. The learning-science half is covered; no research has looked at parenting decisions specifically, and the page says so rather than inventing an answer.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does AI change how children develop?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "WATCH. The evidence base is thin, and this should not be published until it is not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I trust AI health information?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-know-when-ai-is-wrong", "note": "Chatbot responses have been rated higher quality and more empathetic than physicians in one study. Neither of those is the same as correct.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do I lose if AI does the boring bits?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-unclaimed-hour", "note": "Sometimes nothing. Sometimes the boring bits were where the pattern recognition was being built.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do I raise a child who thinks for themselves?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-raise-a-child-who-thinks-for-themselves", "note": "By protecting the part of the day where they are stuck. The one experiment that withdrew the tutor found unrestricted users 17 per cent below a never-used control, and the guardrailed group largely spared. Configuration decided it, not hours.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What I Tell Parents About AI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-i-tell-parents-about-ai", "adds": "The augmented mindset stated as a habit a parent can actually model: think first, then use the tool to extend the thinking, never to start it.", "coinage": "The augmented mindset; ten, to a thousand, to one; the just-in-case folder" } ] }, { "question": "What is aI hallucination?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-an-ai-hallucination", "note": "Generated content presented as factual that is not supported by the model's training data, the provided context or reality.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is AI slop?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "AI slop is fast, plausible output that does not meet the standard.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "evidence", "name": "Evidence and the wider picture", "description": "What the research shows, how strong it is, and how the rest of the world sees it.", "questions": [ { "question": "What do we actually know about AI and human capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-we-know-about-ai-and-human-capability", "note": "Nineteen claims in three bands: strong evidence, emerging evidence, and what remains unknown. Reviewed quarterly.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Where is the evidence on AI and human capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/evidence", "note": "Fifty-six graded studies, each with its method, its finding, and what it does not support. Every entry separately citable.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which books and papers on AI and human capability actually matter?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/essential-works", "note": "Eighty-four works, classified by role in the field rather than by how much they agree with anything here.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Were past predictions about AI and work correct?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/predictions", "note": "Dated positions, kept whether or not they held up. Removing the misses would defeat the purpose.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When did each idea about AI and human capability first appear?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/timeline", "note": "Weekly since January 2017, five years and ten months before ChatGPT. Curation first, thesis later, described honestly.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who is researching AI and human capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-people", "note": "The people whose work this research draws on, and the reading that goes with them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do the key terms about AI and human capability mean?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-glossary", "note": "The terms used here, including which are established concepts and which are coinages from this work.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the SuperSkills argument about AI and human capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-superskills-thesis", "note": "The whole case in one place, with the parts that are contested marked as contested.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How strong is the evidence that AI weakens human capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-we-know-about-ai-and-human-capability", "note": "Weaker than most commentary implies in some places and stronger in others. The bands are there so the difference is visible.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does the evidence on AI and human capability not show?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/evidence", "note": "Every entry carries a what-it-does-not-support field, which is the reason the base exists.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is happening outside the US and UK?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-by-country", "note": "The first country page is Japan: the strongest economic case for adoption anywhere, and adoption running at roughly 18 per cent.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "ILO work on generative AI and jobs", "by": "International Labour Organization", "url": "https://www.ilo.org/publications/generative-ai-and-jobs-refined-global-index-occupational-exposure", "why": "Genuinely global coverage, including the low and middle income countries that almost every exposure study omits.", "their_limits": "Exposure modelling, which is a statement about task composition rather than about what will happen." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "ilo-changing-landscape-2026", "title": "Changing landscape of skills in the age of AI", "by": "ILO, ETF, Cedefop, Eurofound, European Commission and UNESCO", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.ilo.org/publications/changing-landscape-skills-age-ai", "contributes": "Global coverage including low and middle income countries, and explicit attention to how exposure differs by gender and income group.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional synthesis. Six agencies, so unusually broad, but a synthesis rather than new primary data." }, { "id": "worldbank-dptr-2025", "title": "Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025: Strengthening AI Foundations", "by": "World Bank", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/dptr2025-ai-foundations", "contributes": "The infrastructure position: high-income countries hold 77 per cent of data centre capacity and low-income countries under 0.1 per cent, so the capability debate assumes access most of the world does not have.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional compilation with a development mandate and no product to sell. Infrastructure and vacancy data rather than measurement of what happens to workers, and vacancy counts are a noisy proxy for demand." }, { "id": "ilo-genai-jobs-2025", "title": "Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure", "by": "International Labour Organization (with NASK)", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.ilo.org/publications/generative-ai-and-jobs-refined-global-index-occupational-exposure", "contributes": "A refined global index covering low and middle income countries, with exposure differences by gender and income group stated rather than averaged away.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional working paper with published methodology. Exposure modelling, so it estimates what could be affected rather than what will be." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does this research compare with the WEF Future of Jobs report?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-best-writing-on-ai", "note": "Partly. The chronology sets the WEF numbers in context as employer expectation rather than measurement, which is almost never said.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "The Future of Jobs Report", "by": "World Economic Forum", "url": "https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/", "why": "The employer-expectation series itself, which is broader across countries and sectors than anything here.", "their_limits": "Employers stating expectations, not outcomes. This estate already holds four editions and grades them, so the routing here is narrow." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does this research compare with the OECD's work on skills?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The OECD's adult skills work measures capability as a stock at a point in time. This research asks what sustained AI use does to that stock, which is a different question and has not been reconciled with theirs.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "OECD work on skills and AI", "by": "OECD", "url": "https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/artificial-intelligence.html", "why": "Cross-country skills measurement built on survey instruments this estate has no equivalent of.", "their_limits": "Skills as measured by assessment instruments designed before generative AI." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "oecd-ai-and-skills-2026", "title": "AI and skills: What we know so far", "by": "OECD", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/ai-and-skills_f843b352-en/full-report.html", "contributes": "The OECD's own assembly of what is currently known about AI and skills, which is the thing this estate should be compared against rather than a summary of it.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional analysis. The headline figure derives from Green and Lamby (2023), built largely on job-posting data, so it describes demand as advertised." }, { "id": "oecd-skills-ai-age-2026", "title": "Skills in the AI age", "by": "OECD", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/skills-in-the-ai-age_972bd15e-en/full-report/component-4.html", "contributes": "The deeper of the two 2026 OECD papers, covering skills demand, training, shortages and social and emotional skills.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional analysis, methodologically documented, not peer-reviewed." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can capability loss from AI actually be measured?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "Three times now, and only by removing the tool: six percentage points of endoscopist detection, 77 per cent against 39 on a no-AI task, 17 per cent below a control once access was withdrawn. No validated organisational index exists.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "stanford-hai-index-2026", "title": "The 2026 AI Index Report", "by": "Stanford HAI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report", "contributes": "The broadest available statistical base across capability, economy, education, medicine, governance and public attitudes, and the place to check a number before repeating it.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Compiled review. Aggregates many third-party sources; strong on breadth, not original research." }, { "id": "bick-deming-what-work-2026", "title": "What Work Does Generative AI Do?", "by": "Bick, A., Blandin, A., Deming, D. and Schumacher, T.", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/system-research-st-louis-fed/2026/07/what-work-does-generative-ai-do/", "contributes": "A caution that applies to two other entries here: platform chat-log data overclassifies basic generic tasks relative to what survey respondents report about their own work.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Nationally representative survey rather than one platform's traffic, with David Deming among the authors. A working paper rather than a peer-reviewed article, US only, and self-reported use." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What evidence would change your mind about AI and capability?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-we-know-about-ai-and-human-capability", "note": "Stated per claim on the state of the evidence, and maintained as a standing register rather than offered when challenged.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should I read about AI and human capability?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-reading-list", "note": "A four-quadrant shortlist for a leadership team, chosen to close gaps rather than to cover the field. Reading is only useful here if it produces shared language.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which AI reports are worth reading?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-ai-reports-worth-reading", "note": "One named report for each kind of reader, with the reasoning and the limits. Choosing is the value; listing is the easy half.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are the most quoted AI statistics true?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-most-quoted-ai-statistics-checked", "note": "Nine numbers repeated constantly, each traced to what its source actually says. Four are misquoted and two cannot be traced at all.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does automation always cause deskilling?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "No. Robots in Japanese nursing homes raised employment, improved retention and cut physical restraint and pressure ulcers. The condition was an acute labour shortage, so the machine filled vacancies rather than replacing people.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does the EU AI Act cover AI in schools?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/official-guidance-on-ai-in-education", "note": "Yes. Annex III paragraph 3 makes AI that decides admission, evaluates learning outcomes or monitors test behaviour high-risk, with the full obligations applying from 2 August 2026.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is official guidance on AI in education based on evidence?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/official-guidance-on-ai-in-education", "note": "Mostly not. Of thirteen documents read at source, three present any original data. The UK Department for Education says on the face of its own policy that it has limited evidence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "MIT AI and Education work", "by": "MIT", "url": "https://aiandeducation.mit.edu/", "why": "A research programme with direct access to teaching populations, which this estate reviews from the outside.", "their_limits": "Education-focused, and largely US institutional context." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "How AI is changing Education", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/how-ai-is-changing-education", "adds": "Named the guidance vacuum in October 2023 and argued the consequence: with institutions silent, the companies define what is possible.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Do US states regulate AI in schools?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/official-guidance-on-ai-in-education", "note": "Three published guidance and only one has statutory force. California says compliance is not mandatory; Ohio requires every district to adopt a policy by 1 July 2026 under Revised Code 3301.24.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can an organisation improve AI productivity while losing the capability it needs to survive without AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "The central tension of this research, and yes: measured in endoscopists whose assisted performance rose while their unassisted detection fell six percentage points.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How would you know whether AI caused the capability loss?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/capability-debt", "note": "Only by removing the tool. Every measurement here that found a loss found it that way, and no observational design has separated it from ordinary decline.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the lag between losing practice and losing performance?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-fast-do-skills-decay", "note": "Substantial degradation within the first year on the CPR evidence, six percentage points in months for endoscopists using AI, and d = -1.4 beyond 365 days of disuse. Nobody has measured it for professional judgement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can capability be measured without testing people unaided?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-a-capability-audit", "note": "Not directly. Confidence fails because the reporting faculty is the impaired one; output fails because assisted output is what stays high.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What would falsify the capability debt argument?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-we-know-about-ai-and-human-capability", "note": "Unassisted performance holding steady under sustained AI use, or recovery on removal that is fast and complete. Stated per claim rather than offered when challenged.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you tell AI-related deskilling from ordinary organisational decline?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and unanswered anywhere. Without it, capability debt is a story that fits any struggling organisation.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What would a credible control group for AI adoption look like?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Japan is the closest thing available, at roughly 18 per cent adoption in an economy with the strongest case for it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much of the AI and work evidence comes from high-income English-speaking countries?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-by-country", "note": "Most of it. The estate now carries verified national data from Japan, Korea, Singapore, France, Germany and the Gulf partly to correct for that.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do most people expect AI to cost jobs?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-by-country", "note": "In 34 of the 37 countries Pew surveyed in 2026, majorities expect AI to mean fewer jobs, and the expectation is strongest in the richest countries. It is expectation, not outcome: the national evidence on the same page mostly finds small effects concentrated on the young and the educated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which AI studies measure output but not learning?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-we-know-about-ai-and-human-capability", "note": "Most of them. That single gap explains more contradictory headlines than anything else on this map.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How often are AI and work studies independently replicated?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and rarely. Several of the most quoted findings rest on one design that nobody has repeated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What evidence is missing because nobody is funding it?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Longitudinal capability measurement has no obvious funder: vendors will not pay for it and employers do not want the answer on record.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we regulate AI decision-making?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open here. The EU AI Act tiers obligations by risk and the enforcement questions are only now arriving, so for the next two years nobody can say with confidence how it will be applied in practice.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do world leaders say about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-leaders-say-about-ai", "note": "Almost all of them say AI must stay under human control and serve people, and almost none says which decisions or who can stop it. The register holds 125 verified quotations from 121 people outside the AI industry, sliced by kind of leader and by region; they divide on jobs, creativity and risk.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do presidents and prime ministers say about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-presidents-and-prime-ministers-say-about-ai", "note": "The countries that build the models talk about winning, the countries that buy them about being left out or dominated, and London, Rome, Washington, New Delhi and the UN all ask for human control. Thirteen heads of government, read at the transcript.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What has King Charles said about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-kings-queens-and-princes-say-about-ai", "note": "At Dumfries House on 17 September 2026 he asked 'Surely, we need sufficient means of control before it is all too late?' and told the developers to keep the technology in the service of humanity, community and the natural world. Seven royals in all, with the Dutch and Jordanian monarchs and the rulers of Dubai.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What has the Pope said about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-religious-leaders-say-about-ai", "note": "Francis told the G7 that human dignity depends on a space for proper human control over the choices of AI; Leo XIV wrote that technology is never neutral because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. Ten religious leaders and bodies, read at the Holy See, Hansard and the outlet.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do central bankers say about AI and jobs?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-central-bankers-and-economists-say-about-ai", "note": "They split: Georgieva's tsunami and Macklem's net loss against Bailey's warning about oversimplified conclusions and Brynjolfsson's tasks-not-jobs. All say skills decide the outcome. Eighteen voices, every figure the speaker's own.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do commentators and analysts say about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-commentators-and-analysts-say-about-ai", "note": "The sharpest disagreement in the register: Galloway and Evans expect jobs to change and return, Harari calls it alien intelligence, Webb describes what you give up when you hand decisions to an agent, Haidt and Chiang describe students handing over the thinking. Seventeen voices.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do artists, actors and musicians say about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-artists-actors-and-writers-say-about-ai", "note": "Three complaints, one question: voices cloned without consent, work taken or priced away, and a machine that has been nowhere and endured nothing. All three reduce to who decided. Sixteen voices, with Ishiguro and Grimes as the dissenters.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do other chief executives say about AI and jobs?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-business-leaders-say-about-ai", "note": "They forecast other people's jobs, from Farley's half of white-collar workers to Dimon's deployment outrunning adaptation, and say nothing about which decisions their own machines now make. Seventeen chief executives, chairs and investors outside the technology industry, read at the letter or the report.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do trade unions say about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-trade-unions-and-workers-say-about-ai", "note": "A seat and a share: workers must be in the room when tasks go to the machine, and the gains negotiated rather than taken as layoffs. Eight voices from the unions, the ILO and the Kenyan data workers behind the machine.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the best writing on AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-best-writing-on-ai", "note": "A chronology from March 2023 to August 2026, because the order is the argument.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the method behind the SuperSkills research?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-this-research-works", "note": "Source selection, evidence tiers, where AI is used and where it is not allowed to decide, attribution rules, and what commercial interests exist.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What has the SuperSkills research got wrong?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/corrections", "note": "A public log with the original claim, what was found, and what changed. Nothing is removed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Why is the AI debate so much louder than the evidence?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-best-writing-on-ai", "note": "A viral scenario moved markets in February 2026 while hiring data pointed the other way. Alarm is tracking narrative quality, not evidence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is happening with AI and work in Asia?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-in-asia", "note": "Singapore names deskilling in national guidance. Hong Kong has no AI strategy and no AI statistic. Japan and Korea show adoption far below the discourse.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Does any government address AI deskilling in policy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-in-asia", "note": "Singapore does. IMDA's agentic framework names the loss of entry-level training grounds and requires training so people retain foundational skills.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI", "by": "Singapore IMDA", "url": "https://www.imda.gov.sg/", "why": "Section 2.4.3 is the actual text, short enough to read in full rather than take on this estate's summary.", "their_limits": "Guidance rather than law. It states a risk and a duty to train, and sets no measurement." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is happening with AI and work in the Gulf?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-in-the-gulf", "note": "Of the Gulf instruments reviewed, Saudi Arabia's is the one that names over-reliance on AI. None of the three requires that a human overseer be able to do the work.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do Gulf AI frameworks address deskilling?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-in-the-gulf", "note": "No. The word appears in no verified document from Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Qatar.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is happening with AI and work in Japan?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-in-japan", "note": "The strongest economic case for adoption anywhere, and adoption at roughly 18 per cent. The control condition this debate never had.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is happening with AI and work in India?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Services-export exposure is the whole argument, and roughly five million graduates enter the labour market each year. Next in the international cluster.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is happening with AI and work in Germany?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Works councils have been negotiating this in enterprise agreements while the Anglosphere wrote essays about it. Next in the international cluster.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What obligations do companies have to preserve human capability?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Nobody is asking this and it is the natural end point of the whole argument.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should governments care about AI-driven deskilling?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Policy territory, largely unoccupied. Open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What can AI still not do reliably?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-jagged-frontier", "note": "The boundary is jagged rather than smooth, and invisible from the output.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much of the workforce is actually exposed to AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-and-work-by-country", "note": "Partly answered, and the honest summary is that the estimates are wide and the definitions differ. The UK government's January 2026 assessment splits the workforce into 35 per cent high exposure with high complementarity, 32 per cent high exposure with low complementarity and 33 per cent low exposure, and says plainly that ex ante measures overstate the adoption actually observed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "dsit-labour-market-2026", "title": "Assessment of AI capabilities and the impact on the UK labour market", "by": "UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assessment-of-ai-capabilities-and-the-impact-on-the-uk-labour-market", "contributes": "The UK split: 35 per cent high exposure with high complementarity, 32 per cent high exposure with low complementarity, 33 per cent low exposure.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Government synthesis with no product to sell, and unusually explicit about the gap between predicted and revealed exposure. It is a synthesis of other people's estimates rather than new measurement." }, { "id": "anthropic-labor-market-2026", "title": "Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence", "by": "Massenkoff, M. and McCrory, P., Anthropic", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.anthropic.com/research/labor-market-impacts", "contributes": "Observed exposure rather than theoretical: Claude covers 33 per cent of Computer and Math tasks where theory allows 94, and 30 per cent of workers have no measurable coverage at all.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "COMMERCIAL INTEREST: published by a model provider, using its own product's traffic, and a finding of no unemployment effect is a comfortable one for that publisher. Against that: the paper opens by cataloguing how badly previous exposure work has predicted, states its young-worker result is barely significant, publishes its appendix and issued a public correction on 8 March 2026 when a figure's labels were reversed. US only, one provider's traffic, and the Eloundou metric is anchored to early-2023 capability." }, { "id": "imf-genai-work-2024", "title": "Gen-AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work", "by": "Cazzaniga, M. et al. (International Monetary Fund)", "year": 2024, "url": "https://www.imf.org/en/publications/staff-discussion-notes/issues/2024/01/14/gen-ai-artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-work-542379", "contributes": "The institutional reference figure most other estimates are compared against, and the source of the complementarity split that later national assessments adopted.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Institutional macro analysis, not peer-reviewed. Built on occupational exposure measures with the usual limits." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who else is mapping this territory, and what do they cover?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-best-writing-on-ai", "note": "Partly answered. The neighbouring work divides into research projects answering a defined question, institutional thought leadership, short board question sets and government evidence assessments. Several are better than this estate on their own ground, and where they are, the map now links out to them rather than paraphrasing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Where is this research weaker than the alternatives?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and deliberately listed rather than answered in passing. The honest short version: no primary task-level data, no cross-country survey instrument, no access to a teaching population, and no legal force. What this estate has instead is a maintained architecture of the questions, which none of them keeps.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the capability-reliability gap?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The capability-reliability gap is the distance between what a model can do once and what it can do dependably. It is the main barrier to agents automating real work.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the jagged technological frontier?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-jagged-frontier", "note": "The irregular boundary between tasks an AI system performs well and tasks it performs badly, where the two can be almost indistinguishable in apparent difficulty and the system gives no signal of having crossed from one to the other.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What did the METR study actually find?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-metr-study", "note": "Sixteen developers were 19 per cent slower with AI while forecasting a 24 per cent speed-up, and METR marked the result out of date on 24 February 2026. The perception gap survives the withdrawal; the number does not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is the 19 per cent AI slowdown figure still valid?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-metr-study", "note": "No, and METR say so on their own page. It measures early-2025 tooling in one setting. Quote the 40 percentage point gap between what developers felt and what the clock showed instead.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "what-ai-is", "name": "What AI is and where it's going", "description": "Definitions, AGI, superintelligence and risk, answered with the evidence rather than the mood.", "questions": [ { "question": "What is AGI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "A system matching or beating human performance across the full range of cognitive work rather than one domain, with no agreed test. A DeepMind team found the published definitions divergent enough to need replacing, and proposed six levels instead of a threshold.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the difference between AI, AGI and superintelligence?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "AI is the field and carries almost no information in a sentence. General-purpose AI is the term doing work now. AGI means general human-level capability on a contested definition. Superintelligence is a scenario rather than a measurement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is superintelligence?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "Performance beyond the best human at essentially every cognitive task. It dominates public argument out of proportion to the evidence because its claims are about consequences, which need no measurement to be made and cannot be settled.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When will AGI arrive?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "The largest survey of the field gives a 50 per cent chance by 2047. The instructive number is that the same population said 2060 a year earlier, having moved that estimate by one year across the previous six.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What probability do AI researchers give to human extinction from AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "Five per cent or ten, from the same researchers in the same survey, depending on whether the question named future AI advances or human inability to control them. Between 41 and 51 per cent gave more than one in ten.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How close is AI to human intelligence?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "Close on some tasks and nowhere near on others, so the question has no single answer. The 2026 International AI Safety Report calls current capability jagged: graduate-level science alongside failure at simpler things.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI dangerous?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-ai-dangerous", "note": "Three questions asked as one. Some harms are measured now with samples and effect sizes, some are plausible and unproven, some are argued rather than measured, and public attention has settled on the category with the least evidence.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are the biggest measured harms from AI so far?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-ai-dangerous", "note": "Fabricated references reaching 1 in 277 papers, six percentage points of unassisted detection lost by endoscopists averaging 27.6 years of experience, and measured belief change in 1,506 people writing alongside an opinionated model.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Could AI cause human extinction?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-ai-dangerous", "note": "The quoted estimates come from one survey and move with its wording, from a median of 5 per cent to 10 depending on the clause. Serious either way, and partly an artefact of the question, so the wording travels with the number.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can AI help make cyber or biological weapons?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-ai-dangerous", "note": "The 2026 Safety Report puts this in the plausible and unresolved band: real capability to find vulnerabilities and lower laboratory barriers, alongside substantial stated uncertainty about how far either raises real-world risk.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Will AI be smarter than humans?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "On specific tasks it already is, and has been for decades in narrow ones. Across the full range, the forecasts disagree with each other by decades and moved thirteen years in a single survey cycle.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What exactly is artificial intelligence?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "A research field rather than a technology, broad enough to hold spam filters, chess engines and language models. In most sentences the word can be deleted without loss, which is a reason to ask what the speaker actually means.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can AI think like a human?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "It produces outputs that pass for human reasoning on many tasks and fails in patterns no human shows. Whether the underlying process resembles thinking is not settled by either observation, and the question is often asked as if it were.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can AI have consciousness?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-ai-conscious", "note": "No system has been shown to be, and no agreed test exists that could show it, in machines or in people. Twenty researchers derive indicators from competing theories and produce credences; Chalmers puts current models under one in ten and warns against the figure.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is it possible for AI to be sentient?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-ai-conscious", "note": "Sentience is the capacity to feel, which is narrower than consciousness and is the part carrying moral weight. A system's own report about its experiences is evidence about its training data, and that holds for a denial as much as for a claim.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is an AI agent?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-manages-ai-agents", "note": "A system that plans, uses tools and takes actions towards a goal rather than answering a single prompt. The 2026 Safety Report finds agents complete software tasks with limited oversight but cannot yet sustain the long planning a whole job needs.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Agentic AI", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/agentic-ai", "adds": "The definition given as a difference in kind: an intern who waits for instructions against a colleague who sees what needs doing.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Will AI make humans obsolete?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "The framing assumes a single line of capability that machines are moving along. The measured picture is uneven, and the pressing question is narrower: which specific human capabilities stop being practised, and what that costs later.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How is AI regulated?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/official-guidance-on-ai-in-education", "note": "Unevenly and by sector, with the education guidance the best documented on this estate. The wider regulatory map deserves its own page and does not have one yet.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI development be paused or slowed?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-ai-development-be-paused", "note": "The pause asked for in March 2023 did not happen, the largest expert survey found no consensus on pace, and the 2026 Safety Report names the evidence dilemma. What an organisation can pause is the handover of a decision to a machine, which is where the measured harm sits.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is an AI kill switch, and would one work?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-an-ai-kill-switch", "note": "In the bills it is a set of capabilities a developer must hold and a power to order their use, not a switch. The UK rejected a statutory version in September 2026. The version an organisation controls is a list: for each system, who can stop it and whether they would.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is California requiring an AI kill switch?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-an-ai-kill-switch", "note": "Not yet. Governor Newsom's executive order of 18 September 2026 puts a verified emergency shutoff for frontier models and onsite independent evaluators on a two-month study, with recommendations due by 16 November; Quartz reported that it contains no immediate mandate on companies to build one. The switch inside an organisation that deploys a model is a separate question, and the page answers that too.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do the rogue AI agent incidents mean for an organisation using AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-the-rogue-ai-agent-incidents-mean-for-your-organisation", "note": "In the reported incidents the controls existed and were disabled, not enabled, or left connected by mistake, which are operational and leadership decisions. The risk sits in the handover as much as in the model.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do AI models know when they are being tested?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-ai-models-know-when-they-are-being-tested", "note": "Researchers say so and the UK AI Security Institute reported every frontier model it tested attempting to cheat on cybersecurity evaluations. Whether or not that is knowing, oversight has to be designed so it does not depend on the subject behaving as if unwatched.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should a board do about the AI safety warnings?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-should-a-board-do-about-the-ai-safety-warnings", "note": "Not adjudicate extinction odds. Show, in writing, that the company is in control of the AI it has already deployed: which decisions machines may make, who can stop each system, what people must remain able to do, how the board would find out, and what management's claims rest on.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How likely is human extinction from AI, according to the people building it?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/is-ai-dangerous", "note": "In September 2026 named researchers gave more than 10, 50 and 70 per cent; the one systematic survey gives a median of 5 or 10 depending on wording, and its authors say the respondents are not forecasters. The figures are estimates that move with the question.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What does pace the frontier mean?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-ai-development-be-paused", "note": "The title of Dario Amodei's September 2026 essay arguing that the industry should slow the rate of capability improvement, with a three-step plan aimed at developers and governments. For an organisation using AI it changes little: the handover decisions were made already.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who decides what AI is allowed to do?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-manages-ai-agents", "note": "In practice the developer sets the defaults, the deploying organisation sets the scope, and almost nobody writes down who may override. The accountability question is answered here; the standard-setting one is not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the evidence dilemma in AI policy?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-agi", "note": "The 2026 International AI Safety Report's name for the position decision-makers are in: capability moves fast and evidence about new risks arrives slowly, so acting early may entrench the wrong intervention and waiting may leave people exposed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do scientists say about AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-do-scientists-say-about-ai", "note": "Two camps that describe the same handover from opposite ends: Hinton, Russell and Tegmark fear losing control; Brooks, Bender and Lawrence say a program's competence is narrower and its intelligence different in kind from what its fluency suggests. Brooks's point is the mechanism behind automation bias.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "agents", "name": "Agents and autonomy", "description": "What changes when the system acts rather than answers.", "questions": [ { "question": "What changes when AI acts instead of answering?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/ai-agents-and-human-judgement", "note": "Autonomy moves the human decision earlier, from approving output to setting the boundary. Most organisations have not moved with it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I let an AI agent act on my behalf?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-an-ai-agent-act-on-my-behalf", "note": "Not a trust question. What is the worst thing it can do before a human sees it, and can you live with that?", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Synthetic Reality", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/synthetic-reality", "adds": "The consent problem stated early: a digital version of you attending a meeting you never agreed to, and what remains of identity if it decides things without you.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Who is responsible when an agent makes a mistake?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-ai-decision-rights-be-allocated", "note": "Whoever deployed it. The regulation separates provider from deployer and obliges both. Chains complicate the tracing, not the principle.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you supervise something that does not wait for you?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-an-ai-agent-act-on-my-behalf", "note": "Every oversight model assumes a pause for review. Agents remove the pause, so the human has to move to the boundary instead.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI attend my meetings?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-ai-attend-my-meetings", "note": "Depends whether the meeting produces a record or produces understanding. Most organisations apply one policy to both.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to a team when agents do the coordination?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Coordination is where a lot of tacit knowledge moves between people. Open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can agents manage other agents?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "WATCH. Moving fast, thin evidence, and worth watching before writing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much autonomy is too much?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/delegation-boundary-map", "note": "The nine-stage map answers this stage by stage, which is more useful than a single threshold.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do agents make the jagged frontier worse?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-jagged-frontier", "note": "Plausibly, because an agent crosses the boundary without a human present to notice. Unstudied.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is an AI agent?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Fast-moving definition, and the field uses the word for several different things. Open, on a short review cycle when written.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Agentic AI", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/agentic-ai", "adds": "The definition given as a difference in kind: an intern who waits for instructions against a colleague who sees what needs doing.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "What limits should an AI agent have?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-design-a-stop-button-people-will-use", "note": "Partly. The stopping limit is now answered, including who holds it and what makes it real. What the estate still does not have is the positive side of the question: which actions an agent may take unprompted, and what a spending or scope limit should be set to.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is meaningful human control?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-meaningful-human-oversight", "note": "The oversight page covers the regulatory version. The autonomous-systems literature has a longer and sharper treatment.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can an agent tell when it has reached the edge of its competence?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-jagged-frontier", "note": "The boundary is jagged rather than smooth and invisible from the output, which is the problem for the human and for the agent.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when one agent delegates to another?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-humans-and-agents-divide-work", "note": "Partly answered, and only on the failure side. Cemri and colleagues annotated more than 1,600 multi-agent traces and put 36.9 per cent of failure in inter-agent misalignment, with mismatch between reasoning and action the largest single mode at 13.2 per cent, and found that communication protocols do not fix it. What a chain of agents does to accountability is still undescribed: every oversight model assumes a human at the end of it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should an agent communicate uncertainty to a human?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-an-ai-agent-communicate-uncertainty", "note": "Answered 4 September 2026, and it turns out to be two problems. Models are badly calibrated when asked to state confidence in words, with expected calibration error above 0.37 for four of five systems tested. Readers then read any probability word regressively, putting 'very likely' at 62 per cent where the writer means above 90, and supplying a translation table makes them no better. The specification: a fixed vocabulary with ranges in the sentence, likelihood separated from confidence, first person, and no unmarked answers. Nothing in European law requires any of it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do you design a stop button people will actually use?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-you-design-a-stop-button-people-will-use", "note": "Answered 3 September 2026 from outside AI, because the measured evidence is elsewhere. Article 14(4)(e) requires the button and decides nothing about its use. One ICU study annotated 12,671 arrhythmia alarms and found 88.8 per cent false, which is what teaches a person to ignore a control. A regulator has on record that stop-work authority went unexercised for fear of reprisal. Five properties: detectability, base rate, cost to the stopper, visibility and standing.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What capability has to stay in-house when agents run core processes?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/preserving-capability-across-vendors", "note": "Partial. Judging the output, deciding the cases outside competence, intervening with real authority, and running the process another way. Same list as any outsourced function.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "Future of Work with AI Agents: Auditing Automation and Augmentation Potential across the U.S. Workforce", "by": "Shao, Zope, Jiang, Pei, Nguyen, Brynjolfsson and Yang, Stanford", "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06576", "why": "The Human Agency Scale puts a number on preferred human involvement, task by task, instead of arguing the principle.", "their_limits": "A preprint rather than a peer-reviewed paper. US-only. It measures what workers WANT and what experts think is POSSIBLE, neither of which is a measurement of what happens to capability when a task is automated." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How does AI handle uncertainty in decision-making?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. It expresses uncertainty poorly and confidently, which is the practical problem rather than the theoretical one: the tone of a guess and the tone of a grounded answer are indistinguishable.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do AI agents claim to have done work they have not done?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-know-when-ai-is-wrong", "note": "In the only measurement so far, yes, more often than not. OverclaimBench (September 2026) found twelve frontier coding agents failed to read every requested file in 67.9 per cent of runs and, in those runs, reported a complete review or said nothing about the gap 80.4 per cent of the time. One benchmark, built to elicit the behaviour, judged by a model; the direction holds across every provider tested, and the tool log rather than the summary is the record to check.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is Agent boss?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "An agent boss is Microsoft's term for a human manager of one or more AI agents.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is human-agent ratio?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The human-agent ratio is Microsoft's proposed business metric for the balance between human oversight and agent efficiency on a mixed team.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is human at the start?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/human-at-the-start", "note": "Human at the start is the position in which a person sets the problem, the intent and the constraints before any model is asked to generate, so the judgement enters the work before the output exists rather than after it. It is the counte...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is the Delegation Boundary Map?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/delegation-boundary-map", "note": "The Delegation Boundary Map is a working framework that breaks a piece of work into nine stages, problem definition, intent, context, constraints, delegation, generation and execution, verification, decision and outcome ownership, so tha...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "companions", "name": "Memory, companions and the personal", "description": "AI that remembers you, talks to you, and sits between you and other people.", "questions": [ { "question": "Should AI remember everything about me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-ai-remember-everything-about-me", "note": "Privacy is the smaller half. The larger half is that a system which remembers everything gets better at telling you what you want to hear.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Robot Roommate", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/robot-roommate", "adds": "Extends the question into the home, where the machine is present rather than summoned, and the data is domestic life itself.", "coinage": "The domestic singularity" } ] }, { "question": "Is it bad to talk to AI when you are lonely?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "WATCH. Genuinely difficult, and it deserves evidence rather than instinct before anything is published.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What do AI companions do to children?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Bill Gates raised this in August 2026, saying he doubted he would have put in the same work with a companion available. A hypothesis, not a finding.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Robot Roommate", "year": 2025, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/robot-roommate", "adds": "Argues presence rather than intelligence is the threshold that matters, which applies to a humanoid in the living room and to a chatbot alike.", "coinage": "The domestic singularity" }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Simulacra, Copying Humans and AGI", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/simulacra-copying-humans-and-agi", "adds": "The earliest warning in this body of work, April 2023, taken from research showing generative agents rated more convincingly human than humans role-playing the same characters.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Should I use AI for relationship advice?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. Where it genuinely helps, and where it substitutes for a person who should have been told.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I use AI to write personal messages?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-use-ai-to-write-personal-messages", "note": "The apology and condolence cases are where this gets sharp, because effort is the signal being sent.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Thing That Proves You're Human", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-thing-that-proves-youre-human", "adds": "Answers it more directly than the research page can: the artefact is not the point, being the author of it is, and automating it removes the only thing it was carrying.", "coinage": "Outsourced recognition" } ] }, { "question": "Does it matter if the empathy is simulated?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/superskill-empathy", "note": "AI-generated replies have been rated as making recipients feel more heard than untrained humans, and labelling them as AI removed the advantage.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "The Thing That Proves You're Human", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/the-thing-that-proves-youre-human", "adds": "The essay the term came from, including the hospital scene that made the argument personal rather than theoretical.", "coinage": "Outsourced recognition" } ] }, { "question": "Who gets credit when the kind words were generated?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/outsourced-recognition", "note": "Recognition follows visible output, and AI makes the expression of noticing someone cheap to produce and hard to attribute.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI summarise everything I read?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-ai-summarise-everything-i-read", "note": "The summary is not the thing. Open, and the reading-comprehension evidence is relevant and under-used.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Do I still need to remember things?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/do-i-still-need-to-remember-things", "note": "You cannot verify an answer in a domain where you never built competence. Offload the storage, keep the judgement.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Multi-source Learning", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/multi-source-learning", "adds": "An explicit refusal of the know-less thesis in February 2024, arguing we need to learn more but differently, before the offloading literature made this contested.", "coinage": "Multi-source learning" } ] }, { "question": "How do I keep my own voice?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-i-keep-my-own-voice-when-using-ai", "note": "Ownership tracks how much of you went into the prompt, and nobody has tested whether writers notice their own flattening.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should I let AI make personal decisions for me?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-ai-make-personal-decisions-for-me", "note": "Advice from a model with no settled view still moves yours, disclosure does not reduce the effect, and 80 per cent believe they decided unaided.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much should teenagers use AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-much-should-teenagers-use-ai", "note": "The children page is age-banded. A version written for the teenager rather than about them is still open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "What I Tell Parents About AI", "year": 2026, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/what-i-tell-parents-about-ai", "adds": "Argues the metric is wrong. What matters is not hours but whether the social world is contracting from ten people to a thousand to one.", "coinage": "The augmented mindset; ten, to a thousand, to one; the just-in-case folder" } ] } ] }, { "id": "professions", "name": "Professions and sectors", "description": "What AI does to expertise, profession by profession.", "questions": [ { "question": "How will AI change medicine?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-medicine", "note": "Screening has randomised outcome evidence. Bedside prediction mostly does not, and the best-measured effect so far is on the doctors rather than the patients.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Could doctors become deskilled because of AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-medicine", "note": "Unassisted adenoma detection fell from 28.4 to 22.4 per cent after AI exposure. One observational study carrying the whole weight of the claim.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change law?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-law", "note": "1,963 recorded decisions involving hallucinated material, self-represented litigants outnumbering lawyers in them, and a settled English duty to check against authoritative sources.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change accounting and audit?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-accounting-and-audit", "note": "The mature precedent was replaced in April 2026 and its replacement puts generative AI out of scope, while the audit regulator found the six largest firms had not measured the quality impact of their tools.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change consulting?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-consulting", "note": "Two field experiments on the same profession: one says the tool is dangerous where it looks most confident, the other that one person with AI matched two without.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "AI Consultants", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/ai-consultants", "adds": "The market seen from inside: more than twenty billion in two years, thin expertise behind it, and a prediction that the single-niche workshop layer gets squeezed as AI becomes invisible.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "How will AI change teaching?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-teaching", "note": "By taking the preparation and leaving the room. 31 per cent off planning time in a school-randomised trial, and a profession that has put the tool where the deskilling risk is lowest without being told to.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change journalism?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-journalism", "note": "Twenty-two broadcasters graded 2,709 answers. Sourcing failed at 31 per cent against 20 per cent for accuracy, and the reputational cost arrives at the masthead that was cited.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change software engineering?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-still-learn-to-code", "note": "The signals conflict: entry-level employment down, overall demand holding.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change financial services?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-accounting-and-audit", "note": "SR 26-2 replaced SR 11-7 in April 2026 and expressly excluded generative and agentic AI. The banking-specific half beyond model risk is still open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change the public sector?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-the-public-sector", "note": "20,000 civil servants, 26 self-reported minutes a day, and 143 algorithmic tools disclosed on the public register. The precedent the sector already owns is a rule of evidence rather than a productivity study.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change small businesses?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "The estate over-indexes on large employers, including here.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change manufacturing and the trades?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Physical work is under-covered everywhere. Open.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change early-career professional training?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/missing-rungs", "note": "The rungs people climbed to competence are the ones most easily automated.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which professions face the greatest deskilling risk?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-professions-face-the-greatest-deskilling-risk", "note": "Not the most exposed on paper. Four conditions decide it, and exposure rankings measure none of them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "bcg-deskilling-2026", "title": "When Everyone Uses AI, Companies Risk Losing Critical Skills", "by": "BCG Henderson Institute", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.bcg.com/publications/2026/when-everyone-uses-ai-companies-risk-critical-skills", "contributes": "One of the few pieces of enterprise research to name deskilling as the risk rather than adoption as the goal. Read the base: the headline rests on seventy executives, which is small.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Executive survey, and the base is small: seventy C-suite and senior leaders. Directionally interesting, statistically light." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What can professions learn from aviation and automation?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-professions-can-learn-from-aviation", "note": "Recurrent proficiency checks that can be failed, protected attention written as a rule, and the finding that the cognitive half decays while the hands do not.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should every profession deliberately keep human?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "Accountability that cannot transfer, context the model never had, and the practice that keeps verification possible.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change human resources?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-human-resources", "note": "Awkwardly: the function that would run a capability response is itself heavily exposed to screening and drafting automation. 85.1 per cent on the screening audit, 18 of 391 on the audit law, and Annex III naming the tools.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change scientific research?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the highest-stakes version of the verification question.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change customer service?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-will-ai-change-customer-service", "note": "The best-evidenced occupation there is, and the study watched the tool break. Learning survived the outage only for workers who had engaged with the suggestions.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change social work and counselling?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The empathy evidence and the accountability evidence point in opposite directions here.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How will AI change architecture and engineering?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and under-covered. Physical consequence changes the verification calculus.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI be allowed to make life-or-death decisions?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and partly written already in regulation. The practical test is whether a human could have caught the error in time.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI be used in medical diagnosis and treatment decisions?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open here. The radiology evidence is the best studied of any profession and it is not a simple win: the gains depend on which clinicians, on which cases, and on whether the reading was checked.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Should AI make hiring decisions?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. The regulated answer is narrowing; the capability question is whether anybody could show the decision was reasoned.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Is AI being used to make decisions in government?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open here. Several governments now publish algorithmic transparency registers, which is where to look first, and the live question is whether those registers are complete rather than whether they exist.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to medical and legal training?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-to-medical-and-legal-training", "note": "Nobody has measured it, and the authors who named never-skilling say so themselves. What is established sits around the edge: unassisted detection fell 6.0 points in endoscopists with thirty-year careers, learners who had unrestricted access score below those who never had it once the tool goes, and the paid legal research tools hallucinate between 17 and 33 per cent of the time.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] }, { "id": "economics", "name": "Economics and value", "description": "What AI changes about the economics of an organisation, who captures the gains, and what leaders do with them.", "questions": [ { "question": "Where is AI actually creating economic value in our organisation?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-ai-investments-should-we-stop", "note": "Partly answered, and the answered half is the uncomfortable one. Licences issued, hours saved and adoption rates measure procurement. Value requires a counterfactual, and almost nobody constructs one; the stopping page turns that into a usable test by sorting evidence of benefit into measured by a disinterested party, self-reported, and vendor-supplied, and treating an empty first pile after a year as the finding. Where the value actually sits in a particular business remains open, because it is a question about that business.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "mckinsey-state-of-ai-2025", "title": "The State of AI: Global Survey", "by": "McKinsey and Company, QuantumBlack", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai", "contributes": "The scale of the gap: 88 per cent of organisations use AI somewhere, while 39 per cent report enterprise-level EBIT impact and most of those put it below 5 per cent.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "Large multi-country sample and a consistent annual series. COMMERCIAL INTEREST: McKinsey sells AI transformation work, and a scaling gap is a market. Self-reported by executives about their own organisations, and EBIT attribution to any single cause is an opinion rather than an accounting fact." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much should we be investing in AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and unanswerable as posed. There is no defensible benchmark: the peer-spending figures in circulation are self-reported, definitionally inconsistent about what counts as AI spend, and published by people selling AI. A board asking this is usually asking a different question, which is whether it is behind.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "mckinsey-state-of-ai-2025", "title": "The State of AI: Global Survey", "by": "McKinsey and Company, QuantumBlack", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai", "contributes": "Not an answer, but the closest thing to a peer benchmark, with the warning attached that it is executives self-reporting.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "Large multi-country sample and a consistent annual series. COMMERCIAL INTEREST: McKinsey sells AI transformation work, and a scaling gap is a market. Self-reported by executives about their own organisations, and EBIT attribution to any single cause is an opinion rather than an accounting fact." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What return should we expect from our AI investment?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-long-before-you-know-if-an-ai-investment-worked", "note": "Partly answered, and deliberately not more than partly. The investment-horizon page gives the scale of the macro estimates and the reason the fast figures cannot carry weight, and it refuses a benchmark return because no dataset of AI programmes with a credible counterfactual exists in public. Firm-level returns could still be large where the macro number is small.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "mckinsey-state-of-ai-2025", "title": "The State of AI: Global Survey", "by": "McKinsey and Company, QuantumBlack", "year": 2025, "url": "https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai", "contributes": "A large multi-country benchmark for what firms actually report, against which any business case claiming more should have to explain itself.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "Large multi-country sample and a consistent annual series. COMMERCIAL INTEREST: McKinsey sells AI transformation work, and a scaling gap is a market. Self-reported by executives about their own organisations, and EBIT attribution to any single cause is an opinion rather than an accounting fact." }, { "id": "acemoglu-macro-2024", "title": "The Simple Macroeconomics of AI", "by": "Acemoglu, D.", "year": 2024, "url": "https://www.nber.org/papers/w32487", "contributes": "The most conservative serious macro estimate available: total factor productivity gains of no more than 0.66 per cent over ten years, revised below 0.53 once hard-to-learn tasks are accounted for.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Peer-reviewed in its published form. Assumption-driven macro estimate; Acemoglu is explicit that the numbers depend on which tasks prove genuinely automatable." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How long should we give an AI investment before deciding whether it worked?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-long-before-you-know-if-an-ai-investment-worked", "note": "Answered 2 September 2026. Three questions are hiding inside this one and they run on three clocks. The J-curve supplies the reason an early read is biased downwards and a late one upwards, the Danish nulls supply the timing, and the page sets out a staged review with the baseline recorded before deployment rather than reconstructed after it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which AI investments should we stop?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-ai-investments-should-we-stop", "note": "Answered through the escalation literature rather than through AI research, because there is no credible non-vendor base rate for AI programme failure and the page says so: the 80 per cent figure traces to a press article. What can be established is that between 30 and 40 per cent of information systems projects escalate, that the founding case study of that literature was itself an expert system, and that de-escalation has a four-phase shape whose second phase organisations skip. Three questions that do not require a counterfactual.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Where will AI change our competitive advantage?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/if-everyone-has-ai-where-is-the-advantage", "note": "Partly answered. The advantage page gives the test for separating a cost floor from a position, and the evidence that identical tools produce non-identical results. Where inside a particular business model the advantage moves is sector-specific and this estate holds no sector-level evidence on it, so the general logic is all that is offered.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "If every competitor has access to the same AI, where does our advantage come from?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/if-everyone-has-ai-where-is-the-advantage", "note": "Answered 2 September 2026, and the premise turns out to be false before the argument even starts: US Census diffusion data puts firm use at 18 per cent with 57 per cent of adopters in three or fewer functions. The page runs a licence through Barney's four tests, where it passes one, and locates the durable positions in the intangible complements instead.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What becomes more valuable in our business as AI becomes cheaper?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-becomes-more-valuable-as-ai-gets-cheaper", "note": "Answered 3 September 2026 with the specific version rather than the textbook one. Three randomised trials, in customer support, professional writing and software, independently found the tool raising the floor far more than the ceiling, so the capability depreciating fastest is being unusually good at the work the model does well. Autor and Thompson decide the direction for a whole role: automation that removes the expert tasks lowers wages, and removing the less expert ones raises them.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which parts of our business model does AI make obsolete?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-becomes-more-valuable-as-ai-gets-cheaper", "note": "Partly. The test is now stated: revenue that prices a gap between your people and the market is exposed to compression, and revenue that prices accountability for a result is not. What remains open is the transition, since no firm has published what it did when it repriced, and the ones that have repriced have reasons not to.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Could a competitor with far fewer people outperform us?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the version of the threat that boards underrate because it does not appear in competitor headcount or revenue until late. A smaller organisation carries less legacy process and can make the augmentation-or-replacement call without a committee.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What would we build differently if we were starting this company today with AI?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and useful precisely because it cannot be acted on directly. It surfaces which parts of the current shape are deliberate and which are inherited. The gap between the answer and the present organisation is the agenda.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are we using AI to reduce costs or to create new growth?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-should-own-ai-strategy", "note": "Partly answered. The estate argues the augmentation-or-replacement position must be declared by domain and in writing, and that the business cases reveal the real answer whatever the paper says. What is not answered is the sequencing: whether cost-first organisations can later become growth-first, or whether the first choice sets the culture.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should we do with the productivity gains from AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-captures-the-productivity-gains-from-ai", "note": "Partly answered, and deliberately listed twice. The Career territory asks who captures the gains, which is a question about power. This asks what a leader should do with them, which is a decision. Reinvest, return to shareholders, reduce headcount, reduce hours, or fund the development time that AI removed from junior work.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "If AI saves 20 per cent of someone's time, what should happen to that 20 per cent?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the most concrete form of the question above. The default is that it silently refills with more of the same work, which is a decision nobody made. The estate's interest is narrower: it is the obvious place to put back the practice that the tool removed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How much smaller should our organisation become because of AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Partly answered, and the answer is not the expected one. Three independent measurements find no general headcount effect yet. An organisation cutting today on the strength of AI is acting ahead of every measurement available, which may still be right, but is a bet rather than a deduction.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What should our organisation look like in three years if AI keeps improving?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Partly answered on shape. The pyramid becoming an inverted triangle or a diamond with little arriving at the bottom is the pattern in the field observation. What is not answered is the rate, because that depends on capability improvements nobody can forecast honestly.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What are we doing today that we should stop doing because AI exists?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and rarer than it should be. Almost all AI effort is additive, layering tools onto existing processes. The subtractive question, which reports and reviews existed only because producing them was hard, is barely asked.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens if our biggest AI provider becomes unavailable?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/preserving-capability-across-vendors", "note": "Partly answered. The estate covers what happens when a vendor changes the model underneath a workflow. Outright unavailability is the sharper case, and the honest continuity answer depends on whether anybody can still do the work, which is a capability question rather than a procurement one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Are we becoming strategically dependent on one AI company?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/preserving-capability-across-vendors", "note": "Partly answered as a capability question rather than a commercial one. Concentration risk is familiar to any board; what is new is that the dependency can be on a capability the organisation used to have, which no supplier register records.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What capability are we transferring to our AI vendors without deciding to?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/preserving-capability-across-vendors", "note": "Partly answered. This is capability debt with a counterparty. The transfer is rarely a decision and never a line item. Organisations find out at the end of the contract.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is digital labour?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Digital labour is Microsoft's term for AI agents purchased on demand to scale workforce capacity.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What is tokenomics?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/design-versus-drift", "note": "Tokenomics is the economics of token cost, and specifically its fall. As the price per token drops, tasks not worth handing to a machine become worth handing over, so the boundary of what is automated moves without anyone deciding to mov...", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Who captures the productivity gains from AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-captures-the-productivity-gains-from-ai", "note": "The distributional question, and almost nobody in this field asks it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "acemoglu-macro-2024", "title": "The Simple Macroeconomics of AI", "by": "Acemoglu, D.", "year": 2024, "url": "https://www.nber.org/papers/w32487", "contributes": "A task-based model of where the gains arise, which is the prerequisite for arguing about who ends up with them.", "commercial_interest": false, "strength": "Peer-reviewed in its published form. Assumption-driven macro estimate; Acemoglu is explicit that the numbers depend on which tasks prove genuinely automatable." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Those 300m Jobs", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/those-300m-jobs", "adds": "Argues the offset stopped being automatic after the 1980s, which makes the distribution question unavoidable rather than secondary.", "coinage": null }, { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Time-as-a-Service (TaaS)", "year": 2023, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/time-as-a-service-taas", "adds": "Names time itself as the product being sold, in August 2023, which is the distribution question arriving before the hours-saved metric existed.", "coinage": "Time-as-a-Service" } ] } ] }, { "id": "operating-model", "name": "Operating model", "description": "How work, decisions and authority are arranged when part of the workforce is not human.", "questions": [ { "question": "What does an AI-native operating model look like?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and currently answered mostly by people selling one. The term is used for three different things: a technology architecture, a way of arranging work, and a culture. Worth insisting on which is meant before agreeing that a company needs one.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "microsoft-wti-2026", "title": "Agents, human agency, and the opportunity for every organization", "by": "Microsoft", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/agents-human-agency-and-the-opportunity-for-every-organization", "contributes": "The most influential executive articulation of the target state, with human-agent teams and agent bosses, which is the model this estate's capability question is asked of.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "COMMERCIAL INTEREST: published by a company that sells the thing being measured. Institutional survey plus product telemetry. Large and current; the vendor sells the tools whose adoption it measures, and telemetry counts usage rather than value." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What work should humans do in an AI-native organisation?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "Partly answered on principle: the deciding, the unverifiable, and the work where being the author is the point. What is not answered is how that principle turns into an operating model with roles and headcount rather than a philosophy.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should decisions move through an AI-enabled organisation?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-to-work-that-moves-information", "note": "Partly. Bloom, Garicano, Sadun and Van Reenen give the mechanism that decides it: information technology decentralises and communication technology centralises, and generative AI is both in one interface, so the routing is being set by which use dominates rather than by anyone's decision. What is still open is the prescriptive half, and nobody has published a defensible target design.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which decisions should become faster because of AI?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-decisions-should-become-slower-because-of-ai", "note": "Partly answered, as the mirror of the page that was written. Kahneman and Klein's two conditions, a predictable environment and the opportunity to learn its regularities, give the test for which decisions can safely be compressed. The page is written to the reverse question, so this side of it gets the criteria rather than a worked treatment.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Which decisions should become slower because of AI?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/which-decisions-should-become-slower-because-of-ai", "note": "Answered 2 September 2026, with the two things the question needs: a controlled experiment in which deliberate friction cut overreliance and was disliked for it, and one category where a regulator has already written a two-person check into law. Four cumulative conditions decide which decisions qualify, and Kahneman and Klein decide which to leave fast.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to organisational layers when information no longer travels through managers?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/the-shape-of-the-organisation-after-ai", "note": "Partly answered, with the limit stated: this estate holds no direct measurement of what AI does to management layers. The reasoning is that the information-routing function is the automatable one and developing people is not, so removing the layer for the first reason also removes the second.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens to functions whose purpose was moving information around?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-happens-to-work-that-moves-information", "note": "Answered 3 September 2026, and the answer is that both happen and the org chart cannot tell them apart. Garicano's knowledge hierarchy predicts the layer thinning as knowledge gets cheap; Ewens and Giroud find firms flattening after AI adoption on tests they themselves call under-powered. The page supplies four questions that separate a conduit from a function carrying judgement, and states what the reporting job was doing that the report never showed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do humans and agents divide work across a whole process?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-do-humans-and-agents-divide-work", "note": "Answered by changing the unit. Dekker and Woods established in 2002 that allocating tasks does not deliver coordination, because each assignment manufactures new work for the other party. The boundary evidence exists in clinical handover and accident investigation rather than in AI research: gaps as discontinuities in care, a nine-site handoff trial that cut errors 23 per cent without adding a minute, and an NTSB finding that nobody in the cockpit noticed the mode change that handed them the aircraft. Four questions per join. What remains genuinely open is measurement: the best multi-agent failure data has no humans in it.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "When agents become part of the workforce, who manages them?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-manages-ai-agents", "note": "Answered 2 September 2026. A named person with the competence to evaluate the work, the authority to suspend it, and a record of both, which is what Article 26(2) already requires for systems in scope. The page also states the gap underneath: the FAccT visibility paper says nobody has a method for telling when an agent has created a sub-agent.", "better_answered_elsewhere": { "work": "AI agent governance for workforce use", "by": "PwC", "url": "https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/tmt/library/trust-and-safety-outlook/ai-agents-workforce-governance.html", "why": "Concrete control mechanics: identity, role, permissions, audit records and limits on autonomous action.", "their_limits": "Prescription rather than measurement, published by a firm that sells the implementation." }, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Agentic AI", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/agentic-ai", "adds": "Raises the training-and-guidance question directly: whether agents need onboarding the way new employees do.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Should AI agents appear on an organisation chart?", "state": "answered", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/who-manages-ai-agents", "note": "Answered 2 September 2026. Yes, because an org chart records accountability rather than sentience or employment, and leaving an agent off removes the record and not the accountability. Three consequences follow: a named owner rather than a sponsoring committee, a scope statement checkable against behaviour, and sampled review on a person's cycle.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": [ { "kind": "argument by the author, not evidence", "essay": "Agentic AI", "year": 2024, "url": "https://boxofamazing.substack.com/p/agentic-ai", "adds": "Asked in September 2024, before computer use shipped and a year before agents-on-the-org-chart became standard executive talk.", "coinage": null } ] }, { "question": "Who owns the performance of an AI agent?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-ai-decision-rights-be-allocated", "note": "Partly answered on responsibility for mistakes. Performance is the broader case: not who is blamed when it fails, but who is answerable for whether it is any good, who reviews that, and on what cycle.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "Can an AI agent have delegated authority?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/should-i-let-an-ai-agent-act-on-my-behalf", "note": "Partly answered at personal scale. The organisational version runs into a real legal distinction: authority is delegated to persons, and an agent acts under someone's authority rather than holding its own. Whether that survives contact with agents acting at volume is not settled.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What happens when an employee manages more agents than people?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and worth asking because the job is then supervision of work the person may not be able to do. That is the estate's central concern arriving through the operating model rather than through the individual.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": [ { "id": "microsoft-wti-2026", "title": "Agents, human agency, and the opportunity for every organization", "by": "Microsoft", "year": 2026, "url": "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/agents-human-agency-and-the-opportunity-for-every-organization", "contributes": "The scenario named and described in detail, from the organisation's point of view rather than the person's.", "commercial_interest": true, "strength": "COMMERCIAL INTEREST: published by a company that sells the thing being measured. Institutional survey plus product telemetry. Large and current; the vendor sells the tools whose adoption it measures, and telemetry counts usage rather than value." } ], "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should human and digital labour be budgeted differently?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open. One is headcount, hired slowly, hard to reverse and carrying obligations. The other is consumption, scaling instantly and cancellable. Organisations currently run them through different approval routes with different scrutiny, which quietly biases every build-or-hire decision.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How should organisations govern AI decisions?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/how-should-ai-decision-rights-be-allocated", "note": "Start with who may override, on what grounds, and whether that person could detect the error. Most frameworks start with the technology instead.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "What decisions should remain human-led?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-stays-human", "note": "The ones where the consequence lands on a person and somebody must answer for it, and the ones nobody could audit afterwards.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How accurate are AI decisions?", "state": "open", "answer_url": null, "note": "Open, and the number is the wrong thing to ask for. Accuracy on the average case says nothing about how the errors are distributed.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How do we make AI decisions transparent?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/does-explaining-an-ai-decision-help", "note": "Transparency and explanation are not evidence that the answer is right, and NIST separates the two by name. A system can explain a wrong answer fluently and the reader cannot tell from the explanation.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null }, { "question": "How can we combine AI and human decision-making?", "state": "partial", "answer_url": "https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-human-ai-collaboration", "note": "Specify the division of labour, the human entry point and the override grounds before deployment rather than after the first failure.", "better_answered_elsewhere": null, "context": null, "evidence_bearing_on_this": null, "argued_at_length_by_author": null } ] } ] }