Critical Thinking in the Age of AI

This is an audio reading and annotation of my essay on Substack, which you can find here: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/ai-has-intelligence-it-doesnt-have

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AI for Humanists: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/ai-resource-learning-guide
Critical Thinking Skills Guide: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/critical-thinking-skills-in-the-age-of-ai 
Beginner’s Guide to LocalAI: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/a-beginners-guide-to-local-ai- 
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Sharing my writing process and reading my personal essay which you can read here: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/are-you-actually-behind-or-just-held

This is the major takeaway (whether you’re skimming or you’ve been reading all the way through): Sometimes, the project will take longer because your calling is bigger than just this one project. Your calling is bigger than the time you set in the beginning, before knowing what role this project is supposed to play in your future. In the realm of creative production, the project often sets the pace. This is what makes us distinct from machines. We can’t always produce passable polish on demand.

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AI for Humanists: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/ai-resource-learning-guide
Critical Thinking Skills Guide: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/critical-thinking-skills-in-the-age-of-ai 
Beginner’s Guide to LocalAI: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/a-beginners-guide-to-local-ai- 
Check out my Bookshop curated reading lists: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/reading-lists 
*This post may contain Bookshop affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting my work!

Philosophy majors now have lower unemployment than computer science majors. Why? Because AI labs need critical thinkers to build ethical frameworks and prevent catastrophic failures. In this episode I argue that humanities education is a necessity not a luxury and explore how to integrate it into trade schools, self-education, and the future of work.

Read the original Economist article: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/06/24/why-big-ai-labs-are-hiring-so-many-philosophers

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Guides
AI for Humanists: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/ai-resource-learning-guide
Critical Thinking Skills Guide: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/critical-thinking-skills-in-the-age-of-ai 
Beginner’s Guide to LocalAI: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/a-beginners-guide-to-local-ai- 
Check out my Bookshop curated reading lists: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/reading-lists 
*This post may contain Bookshop affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting my work!

Three-quarters of all U.S. federal tax revenue comes from labor. So what happens when AI starts replacing the workers that revenue depends on? In this episode, Shae breaks down a January 2026 Brookings Institution paper on the future of tax policy in the age of AI — walking through five proposed AI taxes, explaining exactly how a token tax works and when it does not, and asking the harder question underneath all of it: fund government to do what, and for whom?
"The Future of Tax Policy: A Public Finance Framework for the Age of AI" , Anton Korinek & Lee Lockwood, Brookings Institution (January 2026) - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/future-tax-policy-a-public-finance-framework-for-the-age-of-ai/
Companion Technical Working Paper, Korinek & Lockwood, Brookings Institution (January 2026) - https://www.brookings.edu/articles/public-finance-age-ai-primer

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Guides
AI for Humanists: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/ai-resource-learning-guide
Critical Thinking Skills Guide: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/critical-thinking-skills-in-the-age-of-ai 
Beginner’s Guide to LocalAI: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/a-beginners-guide-to-local-ai- 
Check out my Bookshop curated reading lists: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/reading-lists 
*This post may contain Bookshop affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting my work!

Hey folks, you asked for Part 2, and here it is. This episode is the context that makes the local AI discussion actually make sense: what the open-source AI ecosystem is, where it comes from, how to navigate it without making expensive mistakes, and why using local AI and commercial AI together is not a contradiction.
A lot covered here!!
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Guides
AI for Humanists: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/ai-resource-learning-guide
Critical Thinking Skills Guide: https://stan.store/iamshaeo/p/critical-thinking-skills-in-the-age-of-ai 
Check out my Bookshop curated reading lists: https://shaeomonijo.substack.com/p/reading-lists 
*This post may contain Bookshop affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting my work!