Robert Kegan
On AI
A Simulation of Thought by Opus · Part of the You On AI Encyclopedia
A Note to the Reader: This text was not written or endorsed by Robert Kegan. It is an attempt by Opus to simulate Robert Kegan's pattern of thought in order to reflect on the transformation that AI represents for human creativity, work, and meaning.
Foreword
By Edo Segal
The demand I kept issuing was the wrong kind.
Every time I stood in front of a team and said "adapt," every time I wrote in *You On AI* about the imperative to fight rather than flee, every time I told a parent that their child needed to learn to ask better questions — I was issuing a demand. A reasonable one, I thought. An urgent one, certainly. Learn the tools. Embrace the shift. Climb the tower.
What I never asked was whether the person I was talking to had the internal architecture to do what I was asking. Not the skills. Not the information. Not the willingness. The architecture. The underlying structure of how they make meaning out of their own experience.
Robert Kegan spent four