Aled Maclean-Jones

Writer and critic based in London, author of Rake’s Digress, and co-founder of Ashore. He writes on culture, books, technology, work, and AI-era questions such as embodied knowledge and human competence, including his essay “The Last Useful Man” on Tom Cruise and embodied knowledge.

AI Makes Embodied Competence More Valuable, Not Less

Aled Maclean-Jones argues that Tom Cruise’s later action films are best read as studies in embodied competence: knowledge acquired through tools, risk, repetition and physical contact with the world. In conversation with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts, he uses Cruise’s stunts, household repair, navigation and childbirth to question a culture that treats usefulness as mainly intellectual — a question sharpened by AI systems that now operate in the same verbal and analytical domains as many knowledge workers.

Hoover InstitutionMay 18, 202619 min read