Tacit knowledge is not necessarily an insurmountable barrier, because AI systems could be trained via reinforcement learning on that knowledge, or could become generally intelligent enough to figure it out themselves through experimentation.

Ajeya Cotra counters the tacit-knowledge objection, arguing AI could route around it either via reinforcement learning on the profitable tasks in question or via general intelligence that lets it learn quickly through trial and reading. ✦ AI generated

Ajeya Cotra · Import AI · 2026-06-22 · original ↗

There are two counters to the tacit knowledge hypothetical. One is that we’d have trained AI systems with reinforcement learning on that tacit knowledge because it’s profitable to automate what the Taiwanese worker was doing. The other is that AIs might get really generally intelligent in the sense of quickly figuring out new things by trying them, reading textbooks, and experimenting efficiently.

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