Accountants don't learn bookkeeping the same way: expertise needs new pathways in the AI era

ccatalini · x · 2026-08-26

Daniel Rock argues that "flight simulators for work" is only one viable answer; another is finding an entirely new pathway to expertise—likely both are needed, just as accountants no longer learn bookkeeping the old way and coders abandoned punch cards. He credits Matt Beane's The Skill Code with anticipating this. The thread ties to Catalini et al.'s new paper "Some Simple Economics of AGI", which argues that as AI drives the marginal cost of measurable execution toward zero, the binding constraint on growth becomes human verification bandwidth rather than intelligence.

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