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.
In the old world of work, we were governed by scarcity. Because it was physically hard to produce anything, we assumed that more production equaled more value. But as AI removes the cost of making, we are entering a state of mediocre abundance. This abundance feels like progress on a dashboard, but it often creates a hidden, systemic fragility. When we can add anything, we often end up adding everything.
AI researcher Nathan Lambert recently pointed out a critical risk in this new landscape: the degradation of systems through what he calls plausible additions. He noted that in fields like software engineering, AI can generate endless amounts of code that looks correct on the surface but lacks deep structural coherence. When we prioritize volume over vision, we build systems that are fast to deploy but impossible to maintain. This is the definition of fragility.
The system becomes a house of cards because no single mind has wrestled with how every piece fits into the whole.
In my original essay, I referred to this as the Move 37 trap. The machine can produce a move that is statistically likely to succeed based on previous patterns, but it does not understand the long term soul of the game. If humans do not provide the Move 78 response, the act of curation that ensures every addition serves a core purpose, the system eventually collapses under its own weight. We become victims of our own productivity.
Curation is the only effective limit to this kind of accumulation. It is the practice of protecting the core by deciding what remains connected as speed increases. We must be willing to be the informed-mindful humans that Melanie Mitchell described in the NY Times panel, the ones who provide the grounding and intention that the pattern machines lack. Curation is not about being a gatekeeper who says no to progress. It is about being a steward who says yes only to what is enduring.
The Curator’s Prompt: Look at a project you are currently working on. Is it growing because it needs to serve a vital purpose, or because the tools make it so easy to add just one more feature or one more paragraph?