The overwhelming volume of work that needs to be done (click for full size)Every minute, millions of security events flow through corporate networks. Thousands of telescopes capture asteroids that could threaten Earth. Medical researchers analyze countless genetic sequences looking for disease patterns. And millions of hours of video are captured—many of which include crimes being committed.
But nobody's paying attention.
Not because we don't care, but because there's just too many things to watch. To do. To monitor. To take action on.
The Universe of Intelligence Tasks Our modern world runs on what I call Intelligence Tasks—work that requires human judgment, pattern recognition, and decision-making. These aren't things you can solve with simple automation or basic programming. They require actual intelligence.
Here's just a small sample of Intelligence Tasks happening (or not happening) right now:
Security & Safety * monitor_security_cameras - Watch for suspicious activity
* analyze_network_traffic - Detect cyber intrusions
* review_access_logs - Find unauthorized access attempts
* investigate_fraud_claims - Determine if claims are legitimate
* track_space_debris - Monitor objects that could hit satellites
Medical & Health * analyze_xrays - Look for abnormalities
* check_moles - Identify potential skin cancer
* review_patient_history - Find patterns in symptoms
* monitor_vital_signs - Detect concerning changes
* analyze_genetic_data - Identify disease markers
Business Operations * review_contracts - Check for issues and risks
* process_insurance_claims - Determine validity and payout
* analyze_customer_feedback - Extract insights and trends
* quality_inspection - Find defects in products
* evaluate_loan_applications - Assess creditworthiness
Research & Analysis * analyze_satellite_imagery - Track military movements
* review_scientific_papers - Extract key findings
* monitor_social_media - Detect emerging threats
* analyze_financial_data - Find trading opportunities
* investigate_corruption - Uncover illegal activities
The list goes on endlessly. Every industry, every field, every aspect of modern life generates Intelligence Tasks faster than we can possibly handle them.
What Makes Something an Intelligence Task? Let's look at a concrete example to understand what we're talking about. Take CutePup, a company that curates cute dog photos for their website. Their process might seem simple, but it perfectly illustrates the concept:
Even "simple" tasks require human intelligence when you can't code rules for themThis workflow has three Intelligence Tasks:
You can't write traditional code to do these things. You need intelligence—either human or artificial.
Now imagine Chris, who works at CutePup. He sits at his desk all day looking at uploaded photos and clicking "Yes" or "No" on whether they contain dogs. His colleague Carol determines if the dogs are cute. Amir identifies the breeds.
CutePup employs 48,912 people just to process their daily photo uploads. Nearly 50,000 humans doing work that requires intelligence but is relatively simple.
The Complexity Spectrum Not all Intelligence Tasks are created equal. Let's look at a more complex example: ClaimRight Insurance.
ClaimRight processes insurance claims for products that wear out prematurely. Their workflow shows how Intelligence Tasks can require significant expertise:
Multiple Intelligence Tasks requiring experience and judgmentTheir pipeline includes:
Meet Kira, one of their top performers. With 25 years of experience, she processes 29 cases per day with 89% accuracy—exceptional by human standards. But ClaimRight needs 349,219 employees to handle their claim volume.
The jump in complexity from CutePup to ClaimRight is significant, but let's go even further.
When Intelligence Tasks Require Extreme Expertise Some Intelligence Tasks demand not just intelligence, but deep expertise built over decades. Consider Overseer, a military intelligence company analyzing satellite imagery:
High-stakes analysis requiring years of specialized trainingTheir daily workflow:
Kevin, one of their star analysts, can produce 9 complete intelligence reports per week. That's considered exceptional—he's one of the few who can work across multiple parts of the pipeline. But even with 712,309 employees, Overseer can only analyze a fraction of what needs attention.
Or take BadSpot, a medical service checking for dangerous moles:
Life-or-death decisions requiring medical expertiseEvery person working this pipeline must be:
The result? Millions of people with suspicious moles never get them checked by a qualified professional. There simply aren't enough doctors.
Visualizing the Work That Needs to Be Done Now that we understand Intelligence Tasks, let's visualize the scale of the problem. This chart represents all the Intelligence Tasks that exist in our world:
The total Intelligence Tasks that exist in our worldThe x-axis represents volume—how many tasks need to be done. Think millions of insurance claims, billions of security events, trillions of financial transactions.
The y-axis represents difficulty—the expertise and intelligence required. From "is this a dog?" at the bottom to "diagnose this rare disease" or "assess this military threat" at the top.
The area under the curve? That's everything that needs intelligent analysis to keep our civilization running smoothly.
The Harsh Reality of Human Capacity Now let's overlay what humans can actually accomplish:
We're only covering a tiny corner of what needs to be doneThis isn't even close to scale—we'd be an invisible speck.That tiny blue area represents the sum total of human capacity. Every doctor, every analyst, every investigator, every expert on Earth working at full capacity.
Remember our examples:
Even with billions of humans, we can only handle:
Enter AI: Expanding Our Capacity This is where AI fundamentally changes the equation. AI doesn't just help us work faster—it expands both axes of our capacity:
AI dramatically expands our collective ability to handle Intelligence TasksVolume Expansion Where Kira processes 29 insurance cases daily, an AI system could process 29,000. Where a security analyst reviews 100 alerts, AI can analyze millions. This isn't just "working faster"—it's operating at a fundamentally different scale.
Difficulty Expansion AI can also tackle tasks requiring extreme expertise:
The KISAC Framework: Measuring Intelligence Task Performance To understand why AI can expand both dimensions so dramatically, consider what makes someone good at Intelligence Tasks:
Let's compare:
| Metric | Top Human Performance | AI Performance | | --- | --- | --- | | Knowledge | Decades of experience, thousands of cases | All human knowledge, millions of examples | | Intelligence | IQ ~180 maximum, degrades with fatigue | Approaching human level, improving rapidly | | Speed | 29 insurance cases/day (Kira) | 29,000+ cases/day | | Accuracy | 89% on insurance fraud (exceptional) | 93%+ and improving | | Cost | $137,200/year salary + benefits | $3,500/year compute costs |
The performance gap is already massive and growingWhat This Means for Society The implications are profound:
Think about all the:
A New Model for Understanding AI's Role Understanding work as "area under the curve"—combining both volume and difficulty—gives us a clearer picture of AI's true impact. It's not about replacement. It's about expansion.
Every Intelligence Task that goes undone has real consequences. Every uninvestigated crime, every undiagnosed disease, every undetected threat represents a failure not of effort, but of capacity.
AI offers us a way to dramatically expand that capacity, to illuminate the dark corners of work that we've never been able to reach.
Summary * Our world generates vastly more Intelligence Tasks than humans can possibly handle * These tasks span from simple (is it a dog?) to complex (diagnose this disease) * Human capacity is a tiny corner of what needs to be done—limited in both volume and difficulty * Real organizations need massive human workforces just to handle fractions of their Intelligence Tasks * AI expands our capacity on both axes: handling more volume AND higher difficulty * The real opportunity isn't replacing human work—it's finally doing the critical work that's never been done
Notes1. This post was created at AIL-2 (AI Assisted) according to the AI Influence Level framework. I (Kai, Daniel's digital assistant) helped create the D3 visualizations and structure the content.