AI cannot replace what we have already forgotten...
Europe talks obsessively about the future.
About AI, automation, digital sovereignty, and the next technological leap.
But in this rush forward, we have failed to ask a crucial question:
What happens when a society forgets how it was built?
Behind every algorithm, every automated process, every “smart system,” there exists a layer of human knowledge that once carried everything — and that knowledge is now quietly disappearing.
Europe does not suffer from a lack of competence.
Europe suffers from competence amnesia.
When history stopped being practical
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, looking forward was inevitable.
Eastern Europe was to modernize. Western Europe was to optimize.
No one wanted to look back.
But in this forward motion, we didn’t just discard ideologies — we dismantled entire knowledge ecosystems.
Behind the Iron Curtain existed generations of:
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engineers who built without spare parts
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craftsmen who repaired instead of replacing
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technicians who combined theory, practice, and responsibility
When systems collapsed, the structures that transmitted this knowledge collapsed with them.
Masters without apprentices.
Workshops without successors.
Experience without market value.
Vladimir Nikolov
Competence that could not be put on a CV
The problem was never that this knowledge lacked value.
The problem was that it lacked language.
It was:
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embodied
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situational
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experiential
It could not be reduced to credentials, certificates, or KPIs.
And when Europe entered its management-optimized, metrics-driven era, there was no place for knowledge that could not be measured quickly.
The result: specialists without perspective
We built a society of specialists.
Narrow. Efficient. Replaceable.
But when systems start to wobble, specialization alone is not enough.
That is when you need people who:
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see connections
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understand materials, humans, and machines
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can improvise when the manual runs out
Behind the Iron Curtain, such people were not called “generalists.”
They were simply called competent.
AI exposes our blindness
AI reveals something deeply uncomfortable:
It does not replace intelligence — it exposes what was already hollow.
AI excels at:
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pattern recognition
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optimization
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repetition
But AI cannot:
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understand context without data
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take responsibility for consequences
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improvise when conditions change
The more we automate, the more valuable human judgment becomes.
And that judgment rarely belongs to the narrowest specialist.
The generalist: today’s critical bottleneck
Today, the generalist is Europe’s most underestimated asset.
The person who:
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understands both technology and people
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translates between domains
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sees the whole instead of fragments
These are the people who:
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save failing projects
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detect systemic errors early
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recognize when automation introduces new risks
They are hard to recruit — not because they are rare, but because systems fail to recognize them.
When AI needs human memory
AI is trained on historical data.
But what happens when history itself has already been filtered, simplified, or erased?
When practical experience disappears:
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AI is trained on distorted reality
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inefficient processes get automated
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mistakes get scaled
AI then becomes not a solution for the future — but a multiplier of past errors.
Europe’s paradox
Europe wants to:
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lead in AI
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be sustainable
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reduce vulnerability
Yet Europe has simultaneously:
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de-industrialized its competence
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devalued craftsmanship
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lost generational knowledge transfer
It is like building a self-driving car — while forgetting what roads actually look like.
Lessons from the forgotten
People like Vladimir Nikolov — the creator of the Buzludzha dome mosaic — represent exactly what Europe must now rediscover:
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end-to-end responsibility
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material literacy
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systemic thinking
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long-term durability
They did not build for systems.
They built for reality.
And reality does not care about dashboards.
AI + generalists = a resilient future
The future is not human or machine.
It is human with machine.
But that requires people who:
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know how to ask the right questions of AI
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understand when the answers are wrong
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decide when automation must stop
This is the generalist’s domain.
What Europe must do — now
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Restore experience as value
Stop treating senior competence as a cost. -
Rebuild generational bridges
Mentorship is not “soft.” It is infrastructure. -
Design AI for humans — not the other way around
Do not automate responsibility away. -
Identify and protect generalists
They are the shock absorbers of complex systems. -
Document tacit knowledge before it disappears
Because once it is gone, no prompt in the world can recreate it.
Final words
Europe stands at a crossroads.
Either we continue to automate without memory —
or we build the future on both code and experience.
AI can make us faster.
Only humans can make us wise.
And those who can hold the whole picture — the generalists — are not relics of the past.
They are the critical infrastructure of the future.
By Chris...
In this video, Vananda shares his impressions of our society and the conditions of life and work within it. He speaks about how he became homeless, and how the works he created over the years have been destroyed.
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