A security technologist who teaches policy at Harvard and the University of Toronto has distilled the messy question of when to use artificial intelligence into a single, useful framework: Is the task work, or is it the gym?
The distinction matters because it reveals something fundamental about what we value in any given activity. Work is the outcome. The gym is the process. If you need to move heavy boxes from one side of a room to the other, use a forklift. But if you're at the gym to lift weights, a robot doing the lifting for you defeats the entire purpose.
Apply that same lens to AI. When a task exists purely to produce a finished product and no one cares how you got there, machines can handle it. But when the learning, struggle, and refinement matter as much as what you deliver, outsourcing to AI becomes counterproductive.
This framework lands with particular force in education. The instructor regularly sees students submit AI-written assignments that are grammatically flawless and fundamentally hollow. The prose feels confident. The logic doesn't hold. An untrained eye mistakes polish for substance. The student, looking at a polished output, assumes the AI has elevated their thinking when in reality they've skipped the mental work where thinking actually happens.
Policy memos aren't assigned because institutions need more policy memos. They're assigned because writing one forces you to think, outline, draft, revise, and defend arguments. That struggle builds critical thinking skills. The assignment is gym work. Using AI to skip it is like hiring someone to do your cardio. You're left weaker, not stronger.
The problem cascades. Students feel pressured to use AI because peers are doing it. Employers notice the atrophy. Skills that should improve instead deteriorate. And it's all entirely avoidable if students saw their homework for what it actually is: practice, not production.
The same logic applies across creative fields. Most image work a company needs is pure work: a logo, a label, a mascot. For centuries, humans did this because they were the only option available. Now AI can handle it efficiently. But a painting, a poem, a novel, a significant piece of visual art? That's gym work. The process of creation matters intrinsically. The struggle to express something you feel deeply is part of what makes the result meaningful.
Society is about to face a hard choice it hasn't had to make before. For the first time in history, we can separate work writing from gym writing, work art from gym art. We can let machines handle pure production. But that means deciding what value we assign to the creative process itself when the machine can produce the output faster and cheaper. It's not a technical question. It's a values question.
Recognizing the distinction doesn't solve the problem. Incentives run the wrong direction. No one pays you to go to the gym. The payoffs to real thinking and real skill development are subtle, easy to overlook, and require discipline to pursue when shortcuts exist. That's a harder problem than understanding the framework.
For now, though, the work versus gym distinction is sharp enough to guide most decisions. You can choose stairs over an elevator. You can choose to walk instead of calling a car. You can choose to do your own thinking instead of delegating it to a machine, even when you're busy and tired. It's harder. It's the whole point.
Author James Rodriguez: "The real test isn't whether AI can do the task, it's whether you need to do the task yourself to become the person you want to be."
Comments