Context: This series is a deep dive into the framework of The Curatorial Mind, based on my original essay. It explores the defining human skill of the AI era which is the practice of discernment and judgment in an age of digital abundance.
One of the most profound observations from the NY Times panel came from AI policy researcher Helen Toner. She asked a question that every leader needs to consider: Is your work a construction site or a gym? On a construction site, you use machines to lift heavy things so you can build faster. At the gym, you lift the weight yourself specifically to build your own capacity.
The danger of the current AI moment is that we are treating our entire professional lives like construction sites. We are moving so fast that we are losing our form. When speed outruns ownership, the work loses its human signature. We produce things we do not fully understand and we stand behind plans we haven’t fully interrogated. We are essentially building a skyscraper out of materials we didn’t inspect.
In my original thesis, I argued that work is becoming faster but heavier because we are trying to manage a volume of output that our sense of ownership hasn’t caught up with. Nathan Lambert’s warning about plausible additions applies here too. When we iterate too quickly, we stop being curators and start being approvers. There is a massive difference between the two. An approver just checks a box to keep the line moving. A curator ensures the work remains a true reflection of their intent and values.
To stay in control of the machine, we must intentionally re-introduce pauses. We must ensure that the Move 78, our human countermove, is not just a final check at the end of a long process, but a guiding force that is present from start to finish. We must lift the weight of the decision ourselves to ensure we are actually getting stronger, not just getting faster.
The Curator’s Prompt: Are you currently an approver of AI work, or a curator of it? How would your output change if your name was the only one on the front page and you had to answer for every single word?