Essay: AI made test-style intelligence the cheapest commodity — judgment is what's left
r0ck3t23 · x · 2026-10-18
- The author argues the skill we spent a century calling intelligence — solving equations, passing tests, producing fast accurate output — was the first thing machines learned, not the hardest.
- Schools and hiring systems were really selecting for obedience to a format, and AI has just automated that format, making it the cheapest capability on the planet.
- What remains scarce is sensing a shift before it shows up in data: reading what neither side says in a negotiation, judgment built from scar tissue of failures, feeling the question nobody has asked yet. No prompt or model replicates it.
- The old world rewarded correct answers inside known frameworks; the new world belongs to people old tests were designed to filter out.
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