#24 Kevin Crowston and Francesco Bolici: The Death of Expertise?

In this episode of the show, we sit down with Kevin Crowston and Francesco Bolici—two leading scholars of information science and organizational behavior—to explore the hidden risks of generative AI in the workplace and the classroom.

Their recent paper on deskilling and upskilling with AI serves as the foundation for a conversation that ranges from ChatGPT in programming to the future of education. The key concern? AI systems may offer short-term productivity boosts—but they quietly erode the very skills people need to think, solve problems, and make decisions when things go wrong.

We unpack:

• The tension between efficiency and learning: how AI tools give us answers but rob us of “learning by doing”

• Why novice users might look as good as experts—but only because AI is flattening the skill curve

• The “leveling effect” vs. the “multiplier effect”: when AI empowers novices vs. when it amplifies expert performance

• What happens to organizations—and societies—when no one remembers how to do things manually

• How educators can respond: should we stop students from using AI? Or teach them how to use it without becoming dependent?

From sales to software engineering, and from university classrooms to global labor markets, this episode explores how generative AI reshapes human learning, power, and value—and what we must do now to avoid a future of mass deskilling.