Insights
Essays from the founder on students, judgment, and staying in charge of your own mind in the age of AI. Every issue of the newsletter, in order, is indexed at On Judgment.
Judgment Displacement
The core AI risk for students, defined: when the tool takes the seat where their own judgment should sit. Why it matters, why nothing else reaches it, and the response, the idea the essays below develop.
Read the thesis →
The Pause Is the Easy Part
New York paused student AI for 600,000 children and required ninety minutes of AI literacy. A pause decides access, and access was never the same question as judgment.
Read →What the Agreement Actually Says
Three AI study tools, read from their own public agreements. Who operates the app, where the promises stop, and what happens to the work your child puts in.
Read →An Answer Is Not Understanding
A correct answer used to require the understanding underneath it. AI broke that link. What to ask for instead of the answer on top.
Read →The Hours Were Never the Problem
A screen time limit is a verdict on a kid's behavior. It never asks what the product was built to do to the child while it had them.
Read →You Cannot Check Everything
Asking a student to verify every AI answer hands them an impossible job. What has to survive is the trigger that says which answer deserves one.
Read →Cognitive Drift
Judgment displacement is a moment. Cognitive drift is the slow loss those moments add up to, and you only see it looking back.
Read →What the Research Says About AI and Student Thinking
The College Board findings, cognitive offloading, and the evidence behind judgment displacement, in plain language.
Read →The Dinner-Table Question
You cannot tell if AI did your student's thinking by looking at the work. You can almost always tell by asking one question.
Read →Your AI Policy Sets the Rules. It Does Not Build the Judgment.
An acceptable-use policy sets the rules of the room. It cannot build the judgment a student carries when no one is watching.
Read →The Two Jobs You Keep
Almost everything can be handed to the tool. Two things cannot: the moment of deciding, and the habit of checking.
Read →Judgment Displacement: The Risk We Keep Missing
The launch essay of On Judgment: the risk is not how much students use AI, but whether it takes the seat where their judgment was meant to be.
Read →Everyone Is Regulating the Machine. The Danger Is Inside the Child.
Brookings found AI's risks to children now outweigh the benefits. Every rule targets the machine; the real danger is inside the child.
Read →Neil deGrasse Tyson, a Last Meal, and the Other 15%
Tyson catches AI's wrong answers because of judgment he built first. What that means for raising students who can do the same.
Read →Where the Laws Stop Short
Every direction of regulation aims at the machine. The half that lives inside the student is the half no law can reach.
Read →While We Argue About Screen Time
Judgment displacement is the AI risk almost no one names. The question is not how much a student uses AI, but where the tool sits.
Read →Why I Built Still In Charge
Why the restriction debate misses the point: what a student is shown the tool is for decides whether they keep their judgment.
Read →Still In Charge vs. an AI Acceptable-Use Policy
A policy sets the rules of the room. Still In Charge builds the judgment students carry when no one is enforcing them.
Read →For schools and districts · Procurement FAQ for administrators · Public adopters