The Apprenticeship Ep. 7

I handed my son a phone and watched him press the screen flat against the side of his head.He didn't know where the speaker was. He never said hello. And when the call ended — with his grandparents, still talking — he hit the red button and walked away.Nobody decided not to teach him. We just never did the thing in front of him enough times for it to become his.That's how almost everything gets handed down between people. It's also the mechanism I've watched disappear from knowledge work — not from the trades, which are fine, but from marketing, strategy, writing, and a dozen fields next door.Three stories from my career, none of them flattering. And one admission I've been avoiding.I don't need a human apprentice anymore. I have an AI one. It doesn't need years. It just needs a better prompt.CHAPTERS0:00 The Phone on the Kitchen Wall3:21 Apprentice, Journeyman, Master5:48 "Time Isn't the Issue"12:24 The Vice Presidents on the Call14:27 What the Data Actually Shows16:09 Codified vs. Tacit Knowledge17:55 The Boss Who Listened20:31 "No, Not That"22:49 Sawing Off the Ladder24:35 No Fix, But Naming It25:33 One Person, Twice27:01 The Moat27:55 Next Time28:22 Get in TouchRESEARCH REFERENCED"Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence" — Brynjolfsson, Chandar & Chen, Stanford Digital Economy Lab, November 2025 https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publications/canaries-in-the-coal-mine/The 2026 AI Index Report — Stanford HAI (labour data in the Economy chapter, pp. 219–224) https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/ai_index_report_2026.pdf"The AI Apprenticeship Crisis: Why IBM Is Tripling Entry-Level Hiring" — Soren Kaplan, Inc. https://www.inc.com/soren-kaplan/the-ai-apprenticeship-crisis-why-ibm-is-tripling-entry-level-hiring/91366413The tacit/codified knowledge distinction comes from philosopher Michael Polanyi, "Personal Knowledge" (1958).GET IN TOUCHI read everything that comes in.https://samuelkirk.com | https://linkedin.com/in/samkirk