Hey Reader,

Welcome to the 14th edition of the 3-2-1 (check out previous issues here).

I write about transforming ICs into Impact Contributors.

And today, we’re talking about the cognitive moves that only became possible with AI.

Let’s get into it.

3 Things for Work (in L&D)

1. How Do Workers Develop Good Judgment in the AI Era? (HBR)

• AI amplifies existing expertise but removes the hands-on, messy work that builds it. HBR identifies five forms of judgment now quietly eroding: evaluative, contextual, tradeoff, anticipatory, and ownership. The leadership pipeline is thinning at the bottom before anyone notices at the top.
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 6 min read

2. New Research: How AI Transforms $400 Billion of Corporate Learning (Josh Bersin)

• 74% of companies can’t keep up with their own demand for new skills, despite spending $400 billion a year trying. Bersin’s research shows AI doesn’t just improve L&D. It forces a complete redesign: from building courses to enabling performance in real time. Companies making that shift are 10x more likely to be innovation leaders.
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 7 min read

3. The Brain Side of Human-AI Interactions: The 3R Principle (npj AI)

• Neuroscience has an uncomfortable finding: passive AI reliance may literally weaken brain plasticity. The researchers propose the 3R framework (Results, Responses, Responsibility) as a guide for cognitive hygiene. Accept AI output without interrogating it, and the brain adapts accordingly. Active co-creation preserves cognition. Passive consumption erodes it (more on this below).
• 🏋 Effort ≈ 8 min read

2 Things for Life

1 . Why Private School Isn’t Worth the Cost (Of Dollars and Data)

• Private schooling may be the most expensive placebo in America. Genetics accounts for ~60% of school achievement variance; the school itself explains less than 2% of test score variation after controlling for prior achievement. The spicy twist: the network matters – just not for the families paying for it. Those who can afford private school already have the network. The ones who can’t are the ones who actually need it. It's like AI. The ones who could benefit the most have not been trained in the thinking skills required to get the most out of it.

2. The Boredom of Parenthood (The Atlantic)

• A quiet, honest piece about the mind-numbing tedium that parenthood asks of you and why paying that price is the point. Not everything worth having is stimulating. Sometimes the value is hiding in exactly the part you’d rather skip.

1 Idea from Me

You’d never hire five people to write the same memo and pick the best one. But you should.

That’s one of the things that became possible in the last two years. Not faster. Not cheaper. Actually new.

There’s a popular argument that AI makes us dumber, and the research above certainly shows that if we outsource our thinking to AI the muscle atrophies.

I think the opposite is happening too. And I think the people making that argument are missing how the tool can be used.

Here’s what actually changed for me after four months of daily AI use (60%+ of my day is in Claude Code): AI didn’t reduce my cognitive load. It shifted where the load sits. The thinking got harder. It just moved from creation to judgment.

Over the past year I’ve been cataloging things that are genuinely possible now that weren’t before. Not faster versions of old work. New cognitive moves that didn’t exist at human speed or human scale.

I landed on six:

1. Parallel cognition at scale
2. Time compression
3. Cognitive load elimination
4. Role multiplication
5. Exploration without commitment
6. Meta-work.

Every one of them demands more from me, not less.

I wrote up all six with examples from my own work. Read the full piece here.​

What would you add to the list?

That’s it for this week. Enjoy your Sunday!

I’ll be back in two weeks ✌️

Andrew

P.S. 👉 If you’re thinking about what capability development looks like when the old constraints disappear, I’d like to compare notes. Hit reply or DM me on LinkedIn.