On 3 December 2024 the Financial Times published AI cannot replace the atomic human, an opinion piece by Neil Lawrence. The standfirst is “Attempting to measure human capital poses a productivity paradox”.

The piece asks whether there is an irreducible core of human attention — empathy, judgement, encouragement — that machines cannot replace, because those qualities are the hardest to measure. Anything that can be quantified is exposed to automation; the atomic human is what is left. The same gap runs through the argument: efficiency gains that are not turned back into time with patients, pupils and the public leave the problems people actually named unaddressed. Universities, the piece argues, can act as honest brokers between scientific capability and that demand.

The article takes up the same themes as the Bennett Institute Annual Public Policy Lecture, given the same day, and as The Atomic Human. ai@cam’s note on the piece is here.