expertise
What It Means
Expertise is the deep, specialized knowledge that people accumulate in specific areas through experience and deliberate learning. It comes in two forms: passive expertise that develops naturally from your background and position, and formal expertise that you intentionally build through focused study and practice with measurable benchmarks.
Why Chief AI Officers Care
CAIOs need to understand expertise types when designing AI systems that augment or replace human decision-making, as different expertise levels require different AI approaches and validation methods. Passive expertise is harder to codify and transfer to AI systems, while formal expertise with clear benchmarks is more suitable for AI training and automation.
Real-World Example
A radiologist has formal expertise with clear benchmarks (board certification, accuracy rates) that can be measured and potentially replicated by AI diagnostic tools, while a veteran sales manager has passive expertise from years of reading client personalities and market dynamics that's much harder to capture in an AI system.
Common Confusion
People often assume all expertise is the same and equally transferable to AI systems, but passive expertise based on cultural knowledge and intuition is much more difficult to automate than formal expertise with clear rules and measurable outcomes.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare, expertise encompasses both clinical knowledge gained through medical training and practice, and specializ...
Finance: In finance, expertise manifests through specialized knowledge in areas like risk management, financial modeling, regulat...
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- 6 industry-specific applications
- Relevant regulations by sector
- Real compliance scenarios
- Implementation guidance
Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"The accumulation of specialized knowledge is often called expertise. Passive expertise is a type of knowledge-based specialization that arises from experiences in life and one's position in a society or culture. Formal expertise is the result of a self-selection of a domain of knowledge that is mastered deliberately and for which there are clear benchmarks of success."Source: Schneider_McGrew_in_Flanagan_McDonough_2018
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