In the Observer on 17 July 2026 I argued that the next AI power class will not be the people who build the models. It will be the people whose judgement others rely on: who decide whether what the machine produced is good enough, who can stop it, and who answer for the result.
The answer, in one line
The people whose judgement others rely on as AI does more of the producing: those who decide whether output is good enough, who can stop it, and who answer for the result.
Definition#
The judgment class is the group whose value lies in deciding, verifying and answering for work as AI does more of the producing. The term was set out in The Next A.I. Power Class Won't Build the Models (Observer, 17 July 2026). The Observer's American spelling is kept for the term; the rest of this site writes judgement.
Why power moves away from production#
When anyone can produce competent-looking output, competent-looking output stops being evidence of anything. Drafting, summarising and first analysis get cheap. What stays scarce is the part that cannot be generated: deciding what the output is worth, noticing what it missed, and being the person accountable when it goes wrong.
That is the verifier's role, and organisations tend to underpay it, because verification looks like checking rather than like producing. The argument is developed on staying valuable in the age of AI.
The trap at the start of a career#
Membership is earned through practice. AI lets someone produce work that looks like it carries fifteen years of judgement when it carries eighteen months, and the people who skip the hard early work never build what the judgment class is paid for. This research calls that synthetic seniority, and the disappearing junior work behind it the missing rungs.
What it asks of an organisation#
Two things. First, decide which decisions stay with people and who those people are, which is judgement allocation, written down as custody. Second, keep building the judgement those people need, on purpose, because the routine work that used to build it is the work being automated first.
The limits of the argument#
It is an argument about where value moves, and no count of the class is claimed here. The evidence underneath it, on what AI does to expertise and how judgement is built, is graded on AI and human judgement. The longer treatment is in SuperSkills (Kogan Page, 2026).
Explainer · SS-2026-405 · Graded against the published rubric
Hirji, R. (2026). What is the judgment class?. The SuperSkills evidence base, SS-2026-405. https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-is-the-judgment-class. Last reviewed 4 October 2026.
An evidence review by Rahim Hirji, not peer-reviewed research. For a material claim, cite the underlying study as well; every study here carries its own permanent link.
How citations and IDs work