Every Monday, 6am PT
The Intelligence Brief
The week's research on judgment, hiring infrastructure, and what AI is doing to both. Read, screened, and summarized by the team that has to act on it.
Week of October 26, 2026
A FAccT audit of resume screening found each additional 30 seconds of review associated with a 3 to 4% rise in selection chances for candidates the AI had not recommended, randomized trials with 1,222 participants found AI raised performance while it was available and left people worse and quicker to quit without it, and four experiments with 3,562 participants in professional tasks found the gain did not survive the return to solo work while intrinsic motivation fell.
Read this week's briefInside this issue
- The Human Intelligence Edge
- The Broken System
- The SupaHuman Standard
- The Future of Work
Past issues
Thirty seconds more per resume moved an AI-skipped candidate 3 to 4%, and assisted output keeps overstating solo skill
What 30 extra seconds of review does for a candidate the AI skipped, two labs finding assisted gains that vanish in solo work, and the interaction pattern that keeps ideas and ownership with the person.
71% say AI makes critical thinking more important, and the heaviest users trust their own reasoning least
SHRM on the 71% who say AI raised the value of critical thinking, what 1,923 heavy GenAI users report about their own reasoning, and the validity gap between a structured interview and a conversation.
80% say AI made them more productive, 6% of their organizations qualify as high performers
McKinsey on the 80/6 gap between personal productivity and company performance, IBM's CHROs ranking the ability to override AI first, and what 30,646 participants say about interview scorecards.
Adaptability demand went up fivefold, and the hours AI saves come back as verification
MGI on adaptability demand up fivefold, the seven hours a week AI gives scientists back and where they go, and what a shared screening algorithm does to a pipeline.
De-skilling is being observed now, and referrals are coming back
BCG on de-skilling leaders already observe, the deference rate behind negative synergy, WEF on the return of the referral.
Deference is the failure mode, and almost nobody verifies
WSJ Intelligence on the verification gap, a 535-person study on negative synergy, Gartner on AI-written applications.
Judgment is the premium, and adoption is shallower than it looks
WSJ Intelligence on the skills companies must protect, Deloitte on judgment as the top behavior, NBER on adoption that is wide but shallow.
Judgment, de-skilling, and the 19% gap
Harvard on evaluator judgment, Stanford on young-worker employment, BCG on organizational de-skilling.