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The Skill Code
Book

The Skill Code

How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines

Matt Beane
HarperBusiness, 2024
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For 160,000 years, the bond between experts and novices enabled humans to transfer skills from one generation to the next. That bond is now under threat; technologist Matt Beane explains why and how. After 10 years of field research with thousands of workers in dozens of industries, Beane discovered that building skill requires challenge, complexity, and connection — the 3 C’s. AI and robotics undermine each of these elements. To preserve skill, human workers and intelligent technologies must collaborate to ensure productivity and the human ability to improve.

Summary

The expert-novice bond is essential to skill-building.

The expert-novice bond — experts guiding novices through incrementally more difficult tasks to build skills — stretches back 160,000 years. But the ways modern people and organizations use robotics, AI, and other intelligent technologies weaken the bond between expert and novice and block skill development. For example, law firms that automate document review create a learning/experiential gap between senior and junior lawyers, causing the latter to miss out on a crucial professional development phase.

The skills gap already costs the global manufacturing industry, for example, $1 trillion a year. Industries such as engineering, retail, construction, and wealth management are suffering similar financial setbacks. The current approach to solving the skills gap problem — formal learning through books or even online programs like Khan Academy — won’t build skills in and of themselves: Theoretical knowledge differs significantly from performing a task in the real world under pressure.

Addressing the skills gap and the weakening of the expert-novice bond starts...

About the Author

Award-winning field researcher Matt Beane focuses on how robots and AI can improve the workplace. 

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