CONCEPT
The Measurement Dashboard
Coyle's metaphor for the small set of headline economic indicators — GDP, productivity, inflation, employment — that governments consult to evaluate economic health, and that systematically obscure the dimensions of the AI transition that matter most.
A car dashboard does not show a single number. It shows speed, fuel level, engine temperature, oil pressure. No driver would accept a dashboard that showed only speed. The economic dashboard that governments currently consult shows essentially one metric — GDP and its productivity derivatives — and the fact that this has been tolerated for eighty years is a measure of institutional inertia, not analytical sufficiency. The dashboard metaphor is deliberate in Coyle's work: she is not arguing for the replacement of GDP but for its supplementation with complementary instruments that capture what GDP cannot. The AI transition makes the inadequacy of the single-metric dashboard impossible to ignore.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The dashboard determines what governments can see, and what they can see determines what they can govern. A measurement system that shows productivity growth without showing cognitive intensity reports only half the story of AI-augmented work. A dashboard that shows output without showing quality cannot
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