Cognitive Behavioral Data

Cognitive behavioral data is the species of behavioral surplus that AI tools extract from users engaged in knowledge work. Unlike search queries (revealing what users want to know) or social media activity (revealing what they want to project), AI interaction data reveals the structure of thinking itself: how users formulate problems, evaluate options, integrate information, exercise judgment, revise under uncertainty. Every conversation with a large language model externalizes cognitive processes that were previously private and unobservable—the rhythm of creative doubt, the architecture of decision-making, the specific patterns distinguishing expert from novice performance. This data is more commercially valuable than any previous behavioral surplus because it exposes professional competence directly, enabling the construction of cognitive profiles that could be used for hiring, evaluation, performance prediction, and the sorting of workers by thinking capability rather than demographic category.