Repaying the inheritance: How education and research policy can address AI's borrowed expertise

This Brookings Institution article argues that the current productivity boom from generative AI is powered by expertise built before AI tools existed, creating an 'inheritance' that is being spent without being replenished. The author warns that juniors do less developmental work, firms hire fewer of them, and research culture shifts toward recombination over slow judgment. The piece compares the challenge to the calculator problem in education, but notes AI is harder because it produces plausible-sounding mistakes, frames problems silently, and offers a much larger convenience differential. The author calls for stricter, more conservative approaches to AI in education and research policy to manage the tension between short-term productivity and long-term expertise building, making the conflict visible before decisions are made by default.