New Webinar - "Personal Learning and Professional Growth with AI"

Personal Learning and Professional Growth with AI
(FALL 2025)
A Library 2.0  / Learning Revolution "AI Essentials" Webinar with Reed Hepler

OVERVIEW: 

This 60-minute session explores how AI tools can enhance personal learning and skills development for professional growth. The rapidly evolving landscape of AI presents an unprecedented opportunity for individuals to harness its power for creativity and intellectual development. The session addresses the transformative potential of AI tools in daily life, while also considering the ethical implications and privacy concerns of integrating AI into personal routines.

As technology reshapes our world, this workshop provides practical strategies for leveraging AI to enhance self-directed learning and career development and to empower attendees to take control of their learning journeys and unlock their full potential with these advanced tools. Participants will explore techniques for goal setting, creative learning, and acquiring new skills, guided by project-based and question-based learning frameworks.
The session aims to help participants understand that personal learning and professional productivity are interconnected. By enhancing personal well-being and fostering intellectual curiosity, individuals can achieve greater success and satisfaction in their professional lives.

Through practical examples, real-world applications, and hands-on activities, participants will leave with actionable strategies to integrate AI into their personal and professional routines effectively and ethically.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand the potential of AI tools to support personal and professional learning.
• Explore methods to boost creativity, productivity, and intellectual inquiry with AI.
• Address ethical considerations and privacy concerns in using AI for personal learning.
• Learn practical techniques for using AI to develop goals, acquire skills, and track progress.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

Upon completing this webinar, attendees will be able to:

• Utilize AI to enhance creativity, engagement, and problem-solving in personal and professional contexts.
• Design personalized learning plans and career development strategies with AI tools.
• Apply AI for subject-matter exploration, project-based learning, and even hobby development while critically assessing and evaluating learning outcomes.
• Set actionable goals, measure progress, and refine strategies using AI-generated insights and feedback

This 60-minute webinar is part of our Library 2.0 "AI Essentials" Series. The recording and presentation slides will be available to all who register. This is a live presentation of the same material (with updates) as the February webinar. Please do not register again if you paid for the previous session--a copy of the new recording will be added to the recording page for the webinar you already purchased. If you are interested in purchasing the previous recording for individual or group use, please email admin@library20.com.

DATE: Tuesday, November 25th, 2025, 2:00 - 3:00 pm US - Eastern Time

COST:

• $99/person - includes live attendance and any-time access to the recording and the presentation slides and receiving a participation certificate. To arrange group discounts (see below), to submit a purchase order, or for any registration difficulties or questions, email admin@library20.com.

TO REGISTER: 

Click HERE to register and pay. You can pay by credit card. You will receive an email within a day with information on how to attend the webinar live and how you can access the permanent webinar recording. If you are paying for someone else to attend, you'll be prompted to send an email to admin@library20.com with the name and email address of the actual attendee.

If you need to be invoiced or pay by check, if you have any trouble registering for a webinar, or if you have any questions, please email admin@library20.com.

NOTE: Please check your spam folder if you don't receive your confirmation email within a day.

SPECIAL GROUP RATES (email admin@library20.com to arrange):

• Multiple individual log-ins and access from the same organization paid together: $75 each for 3+ registrations, $65 each for 5+ registrations. Unlimited and non-expiring access for those log-ins.
• The ability to show the webinar (live or recorded) to a group located in the same physical location or in the same virtual meeting from one log-in: $299.
• Large-scale institutional access for viewing with individual login capability: $499 (hosted either at Learning Revolution or in Niche Academy). Unlimited and non-expiring access for those log-ins.

ALL-ACCESS PASSES: This webinar is not a part of the Safe Library or Learning Revolution All-Access programs.

REED C. HEPLER

Reed Hepler is a digital initiatives librarian, instructional designer, copyright agent, artificial intelligence practitioner and consultant, and PhD student at Idaho State University. He earned a Master's Degree in Instructional Design and Educational Technology from Idaho State University in 2025. In 2022, he obtained a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science, with emphases in Archives Management and Digital Curation from Indiana University. He has worked at nonprofits, corporations, and educational institutions encouraging information literacy and effective education. Combining all of these degrees and experiences, Reed strives to promote ethical librarianship and educational initiatives.

Currently, Reed works as a Digital Initiatives Librarian at a college in Idaho and also has his own consulting firm, heplerconsulting.com. His views and projects can be seen on his LinkedIn page or his blog, CollaborAItion, on Substack. Contact him at reed.hepler@gmail.com for more information.

 

OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS:

 Next Class November 12, 2025

 November 14, 2025

 November 17, 2025

 December 5, 2025 (encore)

The Unbalanced Scale: Empathy, Systems, and the Modern Western Dilemma

Introduction: A Tale of Two Brains

At the heart of any enduring civilization lies a set of stories it tells itself—myths, traditions, and social contracts that organize human nature into a productive, cohesive whole. For millennia, these cultural operating systems have performed a delicate balancing act, managing the profound and complementary differences in how men and women, on average, perceive and interact with the world. Drawing from the scientific understanding of evolutionary psychology, we can identify two fundamental cognitive modes: an "Empathizing" (E) brain, which excels at social attunement and relational harmony, and a "Systemizing" (S) brain, which excels at analyzing rules, building systems, and detached, logical problem-solving.

Historically, successful cultures did not treat these modes as a hierarchy, but as a necessary partnership. The E-domain—the societal "heart"—was valued for fostering community, compassion, and the nurturing of the next generation. The S-domain—the societal "spine"—was valued for creating order, innovation, security, and the complex systems that underpin civilization. This essay explores, from a neutral, sociological perspective, the hypothesis that modern Western culture fundamentally disrupted this balance, elevating the E-domain to a position of moral supremacy while devaluing the S-domain. It argues that this imbalance, while often well-intentioned, creates a significant societal dilemma, with predictable consequences for cultural strength, social cohesion, and demographic stability.

The Deep Past: How the E-S Dichotomy Evolved

To understand this dichotomy, we must look to the different adaptive challenges men and women faced over vast stretches of evolutionary time. It is crucial to state that this is not a discussion of "good" or "bad," nor does it imply that these capacities are exclusive to one gender. Both men and women possess the capacity for both empathizing and systemizing thought. The evolutionary pressures, however, created different average cognitive leanings, valuable specializations that, when combined, proved immensely successful for human survival.

The primary adaptive challenges for females revolved around bearing and raising vulnerable offspring through a long childhood. This evolutionary pressure selected for the Empathizing (E) brain, a cognitive toolkit optimized for relational survival. Its core functions were invaluable:

• Extreme sensitivity to non-verbal cues: The ability to interpret the cries, expressions, and needs of a pre-verbal infant was a direct matter of life and death for that infant.
• Social network management: Building strong alliances with kin and other women created a support network crucial for protection and resource sharing during the vulnerable periods of pregnancy and child-rearing.
• Mate selection assessment: The ability to "read" a potential male partner's character, assessing his long-term commitment and willingness to invest, was one of the most critical decisions for female reproductive success. The E-brain, with its focus on emotional attunement and social nuance, was the evolutionary solution to these problems. Its value was in its power to create the secure bonds upon which human survival depended.

The primary adaptive challenges for males often involved high-stakes, zero-sum competition and the procurement of resources in a dangerous world. This pressure selected for the Systemizing (S) brain, a cognitive toolkit optimized for navigating and manipulating the physical and social environment. Its key functions were equally vital:

• Hunting and warfare: Success in these domains required spatial reasoning, tool use, strategic planning, and the ability to suppress immediate fear in favor of a long-term, abstract goal.
• System-building and hierarchy navigation: Competing for status and resources required understanding complex social rules, forming effective coalitions, and building logical systems of cause and effect.
• Protection and provision: The core task of protecting a family and community from external threats (predators, rival groups) and providing resources demanded a focus on external reality, risk assessment, and decisive, logical action. The S-brain, with its capacity for detached analysis and focus on rules-based systems, was the evolutionary solution to these challenges. Its value was in its power to impose order on chaos and secure the group against external threats.

The Framework of Civilization: Justice and Mercy, Spines and Hearts

This ancient E-S duality is mirrored in our most profound ethical concepts: Justice and Mercy. Justice is the ultimate expression of the S-brain: a cold, impartial system of rules and consequences, applied universally. Mercy is the ultimate expression of the E-brain: the relational override of a just system out of compassion for the individual. An enduring culture requires both. Justice without Mercy becomes tyranny; Mercy without Justice becomes chaos. The cultural narratives of the past (religious, mythological, and civic) were technologies for holding these two vital forces in a dynamic, productive tension.

An Archetype of the Struggle: The True Nature of Spock

Perhaps no cultural figure better illustrates this internal and external balancing act than the character of Mr. Spock from Star Trek. The common, surface-level interpretation sees Spock's conflict as biological—his emotional human half at war with his logical Vulcan half. A deeper, more accurate analysis reveals a far more profound truth: Spock's struggle is not one of competing DNA, but of competing cultural operating systems, personified by his parents.

Both humans and Vulcans, as biological species, so the story goes, evolved from a primal, "Paleolithic" state driven by powerful emotions. The key difference is that Vulcan society, ravaged by its own hyper-emotional past, consciously developed a powerful S-domain culture: the philosophy of logic and emotional mastery. This was not a denial of their nature, but a disciplined system built to control it, a cultural technology for survival.

Spock is the ultimate product of this E-S dichotomy. He was raised at the nexus of two cultural frameworks:

• His human mother, Amanda, represents the E-Culture, valuing connection, intuition, and the validity of emotional experience.
• His Vulcan father, Sarek, represents the S-Culture, championing the disciplined, logical system as the only path to wisdom and stability.

Spock's internal conflict is therefore not alien, but universally human. He is a dramatic representation of the struggle within every mature individual: the battle between our raw, innate feelings (the E-domain) and our attempts to build a rational, disciplined framework for our lives (the S-domain). He is the living embodiment of a society trying to hold Justice and Mercy in balance. His immense value to his crew is not a lack of feeling, but the hard-won reliability of his S-mind—a mind forged in the discipline of self-control, providing the anchor of reason in a universe of chaos. He is a powerful allegory for the idea that the S-domain is not about being unfeeling, but about a deep, abiding respect for the destructive power of untrained emotion.

The Great Imbalance: The Elevation of E and the Devaluation of S

Contemporary Western society appears to be engaged in a grand experiment, one that stands in stark contrast to the Vulcan model of discipline: the systematic elevation of E-domain values to the exclusion of S-domain values. This manifests in several key areas:

• The Primacy of Feeling and the Glamorization of "Empathy": A key mechanism in this shift is the imprecise and culturally loaded use of the word "empathy." The term is often used as a monolith, when in fact it contains two distinct skills: Affective Empathy (feeling with someone) and Cognitive Empathy (understanding why someone thinks or feels as they do). The E-domain excels at affective empathy, the visceral sharing of emotion. The S-domain, conversely, is the home of cognitive empathy, the detached ability to model another's perspective. By culturally conflating all "empathy" with the more visible, emotionally resonant affective type, the E-domain is unduly glamorized as the sole proprietor of human connection, while the S-domain's crucial skill of analytical understanding is overlooked or even dismissed as cold.

• The Institutionalization of Feeling: In many institutional and social spheres, subjective feeling and emotional safety have been elevated to the highest virtues. This creates a cultural framework where the statement "I feel unsafe" or "I am offended" can be sufficient to shut down debate or punish dissent. From a psychological perspective, a culture that prioritizes untrained, immediate feeling over reasoned response is one that champions a state of psychological immaturity. It discourages the development of emotional resilience, a hallmark of adulthood, in favor of a perpetual state of reactive sensitivity.

• The Pathologizing of the S-Domain and the Re-socialization of Boys: Concurrently, traits associated with the S-brain are often reframed as toxic. Competitiveness is recast as aggression, stoicism as emotional unavailability, and ambition as greed. This has led to a particularly harmful cultural initiative, especially within educational systems, aimed at re-socializing boys to suppress their natural S-domain tendencies and adopt more E-domain behaviors. By discouraging competition, rough-and-tumble play, and objective problem-solving in favor of group harmony and emotional expression, this approach risks creating a generation of young men who are alienated from their own cognitive strengths, leaving them demotivated and less competent to face the challenges of adulthood.

• The Political Manifestation: This E-S divide maps almost perfectly onto the modern political landscape. The political Left champions an E-domain agenda centered on care, compassion, and equality of outcome, viewing society as a family that must nurture its most vulnerable. The political Right champions an S-domain agenda centered on individual liberty, personal responsibility, and the integrity of systems like the free market and the rule of law. Their inability to communicate stems from the fact that they are not merely disagreeing on policy, but operating from different fundamental moral and cognitive frameworks.

Consequences of a System Off-Balance

A system, whether biological or social, that aggressively favors one essential component over another invites dysfunction. The predictable consequences of the E-over-S imbalance are already becoming visible.

1. Loss of Cultural Strength and Competence: A society that devalues its system-builders and discourages its young men from developing S-domain skills will eventually forget how to build. An aversion to competition, a discomfort with objective standards, and a focus on emotional comfort over difficult realities can erode a culture's ability to innovate, solve hard problems, and maintain the complex technological, legal, and economic systems that provide its wealth and security. The societal spine weakens.
2. The Demographic Dilemma: The imbalance strikes at the very heart of the relationship market, accelerating a demographic decline. This is catalyzed by two powerful forces:
3. The State as Substitute: Social programs, while aiming to provide a safety net, have increasingly taken over the traditional male S-domain role of provider and protector. This reduces the practical, evolutionary necessity for women to form long-term pair-bonds with men.
4. Technology as Market-Distorter: Online dating apps create a skewed mating marketplace, concentrating female attention on a tiny fraction of elite men. This leaves the majority of men feeling invisible and demotivated, while giving many women an unrealistic perception of their viable options.

The result is a breakdown in the fundamental evolutionary contract. If men's primary contribution (S-domain competence) is culturally devalued and practically outsourced to the state, and if women are simultaneously encouraged to be fully independent while also being presented with unrealistic partner expectations via technology, the incentive structure for family formation collapses.

Conclusion: The Unseen Dilemma

The modern Western dilemma is not born of malice, but of a well-intentioned moral vision that, in its pursuit of compassion and safety, has become dangerously imbalanced. By elevating the societal "heart" to a position of absolute dominance and dismissing the societal "spine" as toxic, we have created a culture that is at once more sensitive and less resilient.

This analysis is not a prescription for a return to the past. It is an observational diagnosis offered in the neutral language of systems analysis. The challenge for any society is to adapt its cultural operating system to new realities without violating the fundamental, time-tested principles of balance. A civilization that cannot or will not value the complementary strengths of both the Empathizing and Systemizing mind is, from a purely systemic perspective, programming its own decline. The path forward, if one is to be found, must involve a rediscovery of the wisdom that a strong heart and a strong spine are not enemies, but essential partners in the enduring project of human flourishing.

FRIDAY ROUNDUP: Hargadon on AI, Albrecht on Libraries, & Upcoming Events

Here's a roundup of recent Learning Revolution and Library 2.0 blog posts.

Steve Hargadon on AI:

• My Vibe Coding Experiment: WOW.
• Output Shaping: A New Way to Think About the Ethics and Use of AI for Content Creation
• Thinking About Thinking in the Age of AI
• The Source Code of Human Civilization and the Real Danger of AI
• The Future of Therapy: How AI Could Transform Mental Health Care
• Human Agency: AI and the New Power to Be Creative
• The Illusion of Intelligence: Why Simulated Consciousness Feels Real Enough
• The Philosopher's Dilemma (and Why We Need to Pay Close Attention to AI's Narrative Power)
• Intentional Education with AI: The Amish Test and Generative Teaching
• AI as Writing Mentor: Question-Based Rather Than Prompt-Based LLM Assistance
• Unleashing Human Potential: One View of The AI Revolution
• Results From the Library 2.0 Survey on "AI Readiness"
• AI Ethics: Generative AI's Three Body Problem
• Chasing Shadows: Elon Musk’s Quest for Truth and the Limits of Large Language Models
• Libraries and AI Webinar Recording and Report
• Students and AI Webinar Report
• MORE HERE....

Dr. Steve Albrecht on Libraries:

• How Do We Change the Usual Library Stereotypes?
• Creating Training Opportunities for Library Staff
• Domestic Violence in the Library
• Shooting Outside the SFO Library
• My Interview on Steve Thomas' "Circulating Ideas" Podcast
• Borderline Patron Behaviors
• Preventing Library Fires
• Kinda, Sorta Patron Behavior Problems
• Make Yourself a Multi-Lingual Librarian
• An Audio Review of The Safe Library
• The Dangers of the Library “Eye-Pad”
• Helping Library Employees Get More Comfortable With EAP Services
• Want Less Work Stress?
• Fixing C.O.B.I. at Your Library
• Creating the Perfect Library Security Officer
• The C.O.B.I. at Your Library
• “Homeless” vs. “Unhoused”
• MORE HERE...

 

UPCOMING EVENTS:

 Next Class November 12, 2025

 November 14, 2025

 November 17, 2025

 December 5, 2025 (encore)

My Vibe Coding Experiment: WOW.

I was a history major in college. But it wasn't until I was helping my daughter get through a particularly rigorous (and rewarding)  AP World History class in high school, and I was doing the regular reading with her, that I realized how much history, as we tell it, is really the history of power and control. 

This led me, over the years, to try and understand what really happens in world events versus how we portray them--which is often not accurately. I lived in Brazil in high school, and one of the great lessons of that time was how differently their perceptions of world events, and particularly their views of the United States, were from what I thought or had been taught. I was in college at the time of the Beech-Nut apple juice scandal (the company had been selling fake apple juice as real for several years), and I wondered how so many people who would have been in the know didn't protest (there was one whistleblower). Because of my time in South America, I later read Confessions of an Economic Hitman and had my eyes opened even wider.

When I visited Caen's Centre for History & Peace near Normandy, France, I became fascinated by the section devoted to propaganda, learning about Edward Bernays and his use of his uncle Freud's theories of the subconscious to manipulate political opinions and purchasing decisions. Honestly, one cannot see the world in the same way after reading his book, Propaganda.

It was also my connection to Brazil that led me to wonder what was really going on with the claimed 2015 epidemic of Zika virus-related microcephaly in one small area of Brazil. That led me to doing a deep research project with Grok this year that I think uncovered the true cause of the problem--an untested larviside being used without rigorous implementation standards. From there I developed a sophisticated prompt that I could give to a Large Language Model (LLM) that would look for signals of deception, for reasonable questions that could be asked about an event, and that also took into account the known human reasoning and cognitive vulnerabilities that are often used in propaganda and advertising. I've posted that prompt, and descriptive material, at www.muckrake.ai. 

As I talk about in "Output Shaping: A New Way to Think About the Ethics and Use of AI for Content Creation," I love this idea of "finding your problem" and using AI as a tool to do something that matters. For me, the "problem" is understanding history, how it is portrayed, how it is often the result of actual conspiracies, and the pathologizing of critical thinking. So, as an experiment last weekend, I put my prompt content and ideas into the LLM Manus.im, and asked if it could create a site which would take this framework and look at specific events as prompted by a user.

 WOW.

The result is at www.muckipedia.com. It produces a result using an API call to Google's Gemini or to Grok, and it even lets you compare the results. I will admit a little bit of my motivation was to see if I could do a better job of getting to "truth" than Elon Musk's Grokipedia project. I guess it depends on what you are looking for, but I remain convinced that LLMs aren't built for "truth" and so Muckipedia is an attempt just to open to door to understanding where to look more closely. See what you think.

New Webinar - "Guns in Our Libraries: A Safe and Careful Staff Response"

Guns in Our Libraries:
A Safe and Careful Staff Response
Part of the Library 2.0 Service, Safety, and Security Series with Dr. Steve Albrecht

OVERVIEW: 

Changes in state-by-state gun laws now mean library staff may be seeing more pistols and long guns, displayed in both open carry and concealed carry, in their facilities. This can cause concern among staff and other patrons, because we don’t always know the intention of the gun carrier.

Context matters in these situations. Is the person displaying a firearm to be provocative? To scare people? To intimidate someone at the library, like another patron, or an employee? Is the person harmless, or reasonable until provoked about displaying the gun? Or does the person just believe in displaying their gun and their knowledge of state, local, and federal laws, all at the same time?

It can be difficult to know the person’s motives and even more confusing to agree when, or even if, library staff or library leaders should call the police when they see a gun. There is a huge difference between telling the dispatcher, “There’s a guy with a gun in the library!” and “There is a guy with a gun in the library.” The police need to know the details, because their response can range from a casual conversation with the gun owner to make sure everything is legal and calm, versus coming into a potential or actual active shooter situation.
This session will provide answers; ways to get useful information from both open and canceled carriers; protect the civil rights of all; and when necessary, use de-escalation tools to keep things peaceful and law-abiding for all parties.

Join Dr. Steve Albrecht, national library security expert, workplace violence prevention practitioner, and author of four books on concealed carry firearms.

LEARNING AGENDA: 

• Review the open carry firearms laws in all 50 states, as they pertain to public buildings, like libraries.
• How to ask careful questions of patrons carrying openly and concealed.
• How and why holsters make a big difference.
• Be able to recognize differences between revolvers, pistols, and long guns.
• Be able to de-escalate both concerned patrons and gun owners in the event of a confrontation between them.
• When, how, and why to talk to law enforcement 9-1-1 dispatchers about a gun in your library.

DATE: Monday, November 17, 2025, 2:00 - 3:00 pm US - Eastern Time

COST:

• $99/person - includes live attendance and any-time access to the recording and the presentation slides and receiving a participation certificate.
• To arrange group discounts (see below), to submit a purchase order, or for any registration difficulties or questions, email admin@library20.com.

TO REGISTER: 

Click HERE to register and pay. You can pay by credit card. You will receive an email within a day with information on how to attend the webinar live and how you can access the permanent webinar recording. If you are paying for someone else to attend, you'll be prompted to send an email to admin@library20.com with the name and email address of the actual attendee.

If you need to be invoiced or pay by check, if you have any trouble registering for a webinar, or if you have any questions, please email admin@library20.com.

NOTE: Please check your spam folder if you don't receive your confirmation email within a day.

SPECIAL GROUP RATES (email admin@library20.com to arrange):

• Multiple individual log-ins and access from the same organization paid together: $75 each for 3+ registrations, $65 each for 5+ registrations. Unlimited and non-expiring access for those log-ins.
• The ability to show the webinar (live or recorded) to a group located in the same physical location or in the same virtual meeting from one log-in: $299.
• Large-scale institutional access for viewing with individual login capability: $499 (hosted either at Library 2.0 or in Niche Academy). Unlimited and non-expiring access for those log-ins.

DR. STEVE ALBRECHT

Since 2000, Dr. Steve Albrecht has trained thousands of library employees in 28+ states, live and online, in service, safety, and security. His programs are fast, entertaining, and provide tools that can be put to use immediately in the library workspace with all types of patrons.

He has written 27 books, including: Library Security: Better Communication, Safer Facilities (ALA, 2015); The Safe Library: Keeping Users, Staff, and Collections Secure (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023); The Library Leader’s Guide to Human Resources: Keeping it Real, Legal, and Ethical (Rowman & Littlefield, May 2025); and The Library Leader's Guide to Employee Coaching: Building a Performance Culture One Meeting at a Time (Rowman & Littlefield, June 2026).

Steve holds a doctoral degree in Business Administration (D.B.A.), an M.A. in Security Management, a B.A. in English, and a B.S. in Psychology. He is board-certified in HR, security management, employee coaching, and threat assessment.
He lives in Springfield, Missouri, with seven dogs and two cats.

More on The Safe Library at thesafelibrary.com. Follow on X (Twitter) at @thesafelibrary and on YouTube @thesafelibrary. Dr. Albrecht's professional website is drstevealbrecht.com.

OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS:

 November 6, 2025

 November 7, 2025

 Next Class November 12, 2025

 November 14, 2025

 December 5, 2025 (encore)

Output Shaping: A New Way to Think About the Ethics and Use of AI for Content Creation

What We Create Matters More Than How

A librarian recently asked me a question that perfectly captures where we are right now: "How can we make sure we're not buying books that were written by AI?"

I think my response surprised her: "If the content of the book is actually valuable, do you care?"

Her question reflects how we believe that the process of creation determines the value of what's created. But that's not how we actually experience most things anymore. I'd like to suggest that it might be time we acknowledged that shift.

The Photography Standard

In a previous post, I talked about how automatic and digital photography democratized visual storytelling.  Photography was once dependent on the photographer's technical mastery of exposure and developing skills. But we actually judge photographs by the output. Most people don't care whether a stunning photograph was taken with a film camera, a digital SLR, or an iPhone. We really don't care about the f-stop settings or whether the photographer developed their own negatives. We look at the image itself and ask: Does this move me? Does this communicate something meaningful?

That's the standard we've now adopted for photography. And I think it's likely it will become the same standard we will apply to written content, creative work, and problem-solving outputs in an AI-enabled world.

The Great Conflation

Here's an uncomfortable question: have we been conflating two separate skills? We've treated writing ability as essential for thinking ability. It's so ingrained in how we define thinking and education that to separate them feels heretical. 

If someone struggles to organize ideas into clear prose, we assume they're not a clear thinker. If someone can craft elegant sentences, we assume they have elegant ideas.

But what if that's only part of the story?

Some brilliant thinkers find writing torturous.  Some skilled writers don't actually communicate anything profound.

There's a famous passage in Plato's Phaedrus where Socrates worries that writing itself will be "the death of thinking"—that it will make people rely on external marks rather than internal memory and understanding. That's not wrong. We did trade some cognitive capabilities for others when we adopted writing as our primary knowledge technology (when was the last time you recited an epic poem from memory?).

What if we're going through a similar shift with AI? We might ask: what becomes possible if we separate the skill of thinking from the mechanics of writing?

The Practical Reality

Here's why this isn't just philosophical musing: approximately 50% of the content on the internet is reported to now be AI-generated. We're past the point where we can pretend this is a niche issue we can screen out or work around.

Libraries cannot realistically avoid half of all published content based on creation method. Schools can't fail half their students for using AI assistance. Employers can't reject half of all applications. Publishers can't dismiss half of all submissions.

We're being forced to evolve our evaluation systems whether we're ready or not. The old gatekeeping methods simply don't scale in a world where AI collaboration is everywhere.

And let's be honest: human authors aren't perfect either. Books written entirely by humans contain errors, weak arguments, and unclear prose a lot of the time. The creation method doesn't guarantee quality in either direction.

What We Evaluate

If we can't judge content by how it was made, what should we judge it by?

The same things that actually matter:

• Accuracy: Is the information correct and well-sourced?
• Usefulness: Does this solve a problem or answer a question?
• Clarity: Is it well-organized and understandable?
• Impact: Does this help someone, teach something valuable, or move a conversation forward?
• Insight: Does this offer a fresh perspective or make meaningful connections?

These are outcome-based criteria. They measure what the work accomplishes, not how much the creator worked (suffered) to produce it.

This is a fundamental shift from effort-based to outcome-based value. We're moving away from "this must be good because it was hard to make" toward "this is good because it works, because it helps, because it matters."

Output Shaping: The New Essential Skill

Just as "vibe coding" has entered our vocabulary to describe an intuitive, flow-state approach to programming (meaning, we come up with an idea for a program and AI does the heavy lifting), we need a term for the parallel skill with AI-generated content: output shaping.

How different is vibe coding from having an idea and hiring a programmer? How different is output shaping from hiring a professional writer?

Output shaping is the art of directing and refining AI-generated work to match vision and intent. It's not about passively accepting whatever the AI produces first; it's about actively steering a collaboration until you get (and improve on) what you envisioned.

Someone skilled at output shaping would: be 

• Articulate what they want clearly enough to guide the AI
• Recognize when the output is close but not quite right
• Iterate and refine through multiple rounds
• Maintain their own voice and vision throughout the process

In our digital photography world, there is still skill in producing a good photograph. It's much easier, though, and there is arguably much more good output. By a huge magnitude. 

Output shaping actually becomes a dividing line between effective AI collaboration and passive use. It's a skill that matters now. It's not whether you can manually craft each sentence, but whether you can shape the output to accomplish what you intended.

Again, I know this feels heretical. But I think it's inevitable. A new tool changes how things get done. I drive a car without knowing how to build one. Is this any different?

Find Your Problem

Claude's "Keep Thinking" campaign captures this beautifully. The ad I keep seeing opens darkly: "There's never been a worse time," with the word "problem" flashing across the screen. Then it pivots: "There's never been a better time to have a problem."

That reframing is really good. We're surrounded by challenges, yes—but we're also equipped with unprecedented tools to tackle them. The campaign positions Claude not as a shortcut or a replacement, but as a tool for people who "see AI not as a shortcut, but as a thinking partner to take on their most meaningful challenges."

AI is here to stay, so we can't just see it as a problem (although, like all new technologies, we are navigating tradeoffs); it's an incredible tool that potentially can help us address the problems we really care about.

So, that's an invitation: find a problem you care about. Bring your insight, your passion, your unique perspective. Then use AI to help you shape that vision into a solution.

Find your problem. Find a problem worth solving.

The Real Question

When that librarian asked me how to avoid AI-written books, it was a totally reasonable and understandable question. However, I think we're going to ultimately conclude it is the wrong question. 

Aren't these the real questions?

• Does this book help someone?
• Does it solve a problem or answer important questions?
• Is the information accurate and well-presented?
• Will readers be better off for having read it?

We've accepted comparable standards for photography. We judge the image, not the process. It may be time to apply that same lens (smile) to AI. The question isn't whether you use AI to shape your output, it's whether your output shapes something meaningful in the world.