One Rule for the Deck, Another for the Bridge

In the preceding essay I put the competence problem at the moment of appointment; in this one I ask who carries the cost of it, and the answer sits in Champniss's own data, largely unremarked.Employees in their first five years of working life record a psychological debt score related to their use of AI of fifty-four. For those past their twentieth year this debt records forty. The explanation offered in the HBR article is that the junior employees feel a greater need to demonstrate technical knowledge, which the machine threatens, while senior people have already demonstrated leadership capabilities lying beyond its scope. Plausible enough, and flattering to those with senior in their title or their hair colour. There is however a plainer reading available, and it requires no psychology whatever. The burden falls heaviest on those least able to push back against it.Consider the two positions concretely. A graduate analyst instructed to put her first draft through the model has no…