Should You Use AI for a Task? Here’s a Simple Way to Decide

Bruce Schneier teaches public policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Toronto. In The Guardian, he proposes a simple framework for AI use: the work-versus-gym distinction. Use AI when a task's only goal is getting it done and the method doesn't matter—think of it as assistive technology. But when the process itself is central to the value—like developing critical thinking through writing—AI becomes counterproductive. Schneier observes his own students using AI to bypass writing assignments, which short-circuits the skill-building those assignments exist for. He extends this logic to the creative economy: most transactional writing and imagery is work AI already handles well, but this raises a harder question. Society must now consciously decide which human skills to preserve through practice and which it can afford to automate away.

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