Teaching AI how people work is fraught with problems
Business | Bartleby
Teaching AI how people work is fraught with problems
Tacit knowledge is vital to many jobs
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Illustration: Paul Blow
Jun 25th 2026|4 min read
Artificial intelligence works best within companies when it knows the context in which it is operating. Some of that context is easy to codify upfront, in explicit rules and guidelines. Some of it can be captured by analysing raw data: Celonis, a German software firm, ingests information from enterprise systems to see how processes like invoices or procurement actually unfold within organisations.
But some information is harder to pass on, and none more so than tacit knowledge, the know-how born of experience and intuition. Michael Polanyi, a philosopher, famously distilled tacit knowledge thus: “We can know more than we can tell.” How can AI learn about work when even humans cannot articulate why they do things a certain way?
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Watch and learn”
From the June 27th 2026 edition
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