AI is No Match for This Ancient Skill-Building Strategy

Matt Beane shares 5 key insights from his The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines.

Are you ready for AI to try to take your job? To stay ahead of the machines, you’re likely going to have to get better at what you do. But how? The science of skill-building is complex, but there are reliable methods you can learn to enhance your knowledge and ability in your chosen field, methods taught by

Matt Beane

in the new book The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines. Matt is an Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Digital Fellow with Stanford’s Digital Economy Lab and MIT's Institute for the Digital Economy. His work has been published in journals like Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review, and he publishes

Wild World of Work

on Substack. Here he is to share some of his big ideas.

1. The 160,000-year-old school hidden in plain sight.

Consider Athens, 507 BC. Twelve-year-old Menelaos begins his second year as apprentice to Stephanos, the master sculptor. Today, he walks to the carpenter’s workshop for lumber. Then to the brass smith for pins and braces. He brings it all back and keeps it organized as the senior boys finish the scaffolding for a new piece. All day, he hauls blocks of marble around the workshop, directed by the senior boys, who take their cues from Stephanos. As the sun goes down, he’s cleaning up after everyone.