SCAN: A Decision-Making Framework for Effective Task Allocation with Generative AI

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is transforming how firms create, process, and apply knowledge, yet little is known about the heterogeneity of its productivity effects across users. We report results from a randomized controlled experiment in which participants-analogs of early-career knowledge workers-were assigned to self-study a technical domain using either traditional resources or large-language-model (LLM) assistance. On average, GenAI access significantly increased task performance, but the distribution of gains was highly uneven. Improvements were not predicted by GPA or prior knowledge, but by \textit{AI Interaction Competence (AIC)} -- the ability to elicit, filter, and verify model outputs. High-AIC participants realized outsized gains; low-AIC participants saw limited or even negative marginal returns. A scaffolding intervention (conceptual maps) reduced outcome variance, indicating that standardized workflows can mitigate inequality in AI-mediated performance. We interpret these findings through the lens of human-AI complementarities: GenAI raises mean productivity while introducing a new axis of capability inequality. Managerially, firms should pair GenAI access with short AIC micro-training and simple standard operating procedures to capture value consistently and avoid uneven adoption outcomes.

Intelligence is constituted by \textit{process} (iterative activity through which output emerges), not in the output itself. Generative AI (GenAI) is trained on \textit{traces} (textual and visual residues of human cognitive processes), reproducing samples from a distribution of those traces. Its outputs resemble reasoning, problem-solving, and creativity, yet the activity that produces such outputs in humans remains largely absent. Current GenAI is, therefore, weakly equivalent to the cognition it imitates, matching outputs while process stays absent or opaque. The cognitive sciences have long distinguished between weak and strong equivalence. Here, we define \textit{strong} equivalence across seven process features, assessable against human and machine cognition. Our process-based account addresses a symmetric risk: GenAI tools that outsource a person's generative processes may leave critical capacities unbuilt. We specify design principles for GenAI that instantiate more process and preserve rather than erode human judgment and creativity, and outline process audits that make strong equivalence testable.

Generative AI makes answers easy and understanding hard, and uncritical use invites cognitive offloading. Schools still measure unaided performance, yet the real task is to produce good work with AI: framing an ill-defined task, judging the output, and steering the model toward a better result. This ability is rarely assessed in its own right; where measured, it collapses into one "prompting" score that cannot diagnose why AI use succeeds or fails. We propose CoRe-3 (Co-Reasoning), a competency model factoring productive AI use into three assessable skills we abbreviate FJS: Framing (specifying an ill-defined task before invoking AI), Judging (evaluating output for errors and unstated assumptions), and Steering (iteratively redirecting the model). Its distinguishing claim is the separation of pre-generation Framing from post-generation Steering, with Judging as the gate between. We ground the skills in theory, state five testable propositions, and instantiate them in CoReasoningLab, an open platform that presents flawed AI output and scores them independently. Over simulated learners (generated and graded by different models), the skills dissociate: each tracks its own manipulated competence while staying flat in the others, and grades become correlated when one competence is shared across all three (convergent and discriminant validity), across grader backends from two providers. Human-rater agreement and outcomes are next; we release the instrument, data, and protocol.