Article
Can AI Replace Human Judgement?
AI can now produce the graphic for an advert. It writes the newsletter. It prepares the product page. The person who used to do this work is probably still sitting in the office. The question is what exactly their job is, and what it will be.
For a long time the story was that AI would take over the routine and leave people the important part. It does not have to be that way. AI can work out faster than a person where a company has the most potential to move revenue, acquisition, retention. And it can carry out the steps it proposes itself.
When AI makes both the decision and does the work, what is left for the person?
The obvious answer is judgement.
What Judgement Looks Like in Practice
It is the ability to look at an output and know whether it is good, and to know it in the context of a particular company, not in the abstract.
Take the work of an advertising specialist. AI generates ten graphics for them. If that person has no judgement about what a good advert graphic looks like in the context of that specific company (its customer, its brand voice, its market), then they cannot be the one whose judgement decides. They click on the one they like. That is not the judgement I mean. That is subjective taste with nothing behind it.
The same holds for the newsletter. For the product page. For anything that can be delegated to AI. The value of the person has moved from producing the thing to judging it. And only someone with real expertise, anchored in the context of the company, can judge it.
Why Most People Lack Judgement
Here is the uncomfortable part. Most people working in a given field today have worse judgement than AI. Not better. Some of them know it, and so they delegate the judgement too: they let AI decide what is good as well, because they cannot judge it more reliably themselves.
But when a person cannot judge quality properly, they cannot meaningfully delegate the work to AI either. To delegate is to stay responsible and able to check. Someone who cannot check only hands the work over and hopes, and their position loses its meaning.
In many companies you can see it clearly. There is someone who only picks from what AI generates, by feel, and changes nothing about the result. And there is someone who is critical of the result, and whose prompting actually gets the output corrected. That is the dividing line.
The minority on the other side of that line are different. Their judgement, anchored in the context of the company, is often far better than anything AI produces. And getting AI to their level is exactly the hard part.
Can AI Be Taught Judgement?
This is the crucial question. My answer: yes, but not in the way most people imagine, and never with a single prompt.
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Summary
Common questions on this article's topic
Can AI replace human judgement?
Can AI be taught a company's judgement?
Why is internet training data not enough for judgement?
Whose job does AI replace first?
How do I know if my judgement is replaceable?
If you have any thoughts, questions, or feedback, feel free to drop me a message at mail@richardgolian.com.
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