Measuring human ability

WHY

Building game-based assessments at Nexus Games made one gap impossible to ignore: the difference between how people describe their own “human skills” and how those skills show up in practice.

We need a way to measure these abilities. I also gained a much greater appreciation for how hard that is to achieve.

As AI changes the work we do, the skills that matter will change with it. Some of the most important may be the most human, and the least suited for a conventional assessment.

How do you measure taste? Adaptability? Social awareness under pressure? How do you assess someone’s ability to judge an AI’s output and decide what should happen next?

What does an SAT score tell us about any of that? And does the SAT even matter in this new age?

Learning to recognize uniquely human abilities, in school and at work, may be just as important as teaching them. Right now, the tools available don’t feel equal to the questions we need to answer.