Why would you agree to train an AI that replaces you?

In the early 20th century, a gifted engineer called Frederick Winslow Taylor embarked on an ambitious task: to extract knowledge from inside the heads of workers on America’s factory floors. In the eyes of Taylor, who would go on to become one of the world’s first management consultants, factory workers possessed a “mass of rule-of-thumb or traditional knowledge” that had been “handed down from man to man by word of mouth” or “almost unconsciously learnt through personal observation”.

Taylor thought it was about time this knowledge was “codified or systematically analysed or described”. To that end, he sent managers with stopwatches and notebooks on to shop floors to observe, time and record every stage of every job. More than a century later, employers of white-collar professionals are beginning to confront a similar challenge. It is becoming increasingly clear that the knowledge required to make AI models genuinely powerful in a swathe of workplaces is currently locked inside employees’ heads.