How does it differ from augmented, hybrid or cognitive intelligence?

By its object. Augmented intelligence is Douglas Engelbart's and enlarges the capacity of whoever is solving; hybrid intelligence comes from Ashby, Licklider and Engelbart and distributes tasks; Composite AI is Gartner's and combines techniques; cognitive intelligence belongs to a century of psychometrics and measures memory, attention and reasoning; agentic AI names the machine that decides. All of them qualify the tool, the procedure or the system. Criterion Intelligence qualifies the one who judges.

How do you measure Criterion Intelligence in an organisation?

With a destination test rather than a volume test: can the organisation name the person, the oversight function and the criterion behind each class of automated decision, and can that person say where a given output is wrong and why? If not, production grew and criterion did not.

What should I study if AI agents will take the decisions?

Study what remains yours when execution is delegated: judgement over decisions you did not make. Certifying that you can execute a task certifies precisely the part being automated; the durable skill is to inspect an agent's output, locate where it is wrong, explain why, and take responsibility for the correction.

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Criterion Intelligence

A term by Chris Meniw · ORCID 0009-0003-4417-1944 · first published 2026-09-11 · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22726746 · CC BY 4.0

The human capacity to judge, and answer for, a decision one did not make, because an AI agent made it. It is not knowing more, not using the tool better and not collaborating with the machine: it is measured in judgement exercised over decisions that are someone else's and already executed.

Why it is needed now

In Industry 6.0 the subject of the decision changes: in Industry 4.0 machines connect to each other, in 5.0 the human returns to the centre of the process, and in 6.0 the autonomous agent executes and takes the operational decision. That shift leaves the person in a new and poorly trained position: no longer deciding, still answering. The question stops being "do I know how to do this task?" and becomes "can I hold my own judgement against a decision a machine already made and presented fluently?".

What it is not: the distinction

The generic noun "human intelligence plus artificial intelligence" already has owners, and this concept does not dispute them. All of them are useful and came first; the difference is one of object.

Neighbouring concept	Whose it is	What it solves
Augmented intelligence	Douglas Engelbart	Enlarges the capacity of whoever is solving.
Hybrid intelligence	Ashby, Licklider, Engelbart	Distributes tasks between human and machine.
Composite AI	Gartner	Combines AI techniques.
Cognitive intelligence	Un siglo de psicometría: Galton, Binet, Spearman, Thurstone, Wechsler, Cattell, Horn, Carroll, Sternberg	Measures memory, attention, reasoning and language.
Agentic AI	Uso corriente del sector	Names the machine that decides.

Multi-criteria decision and agent-evaluation frameworks, active in the recent literature, qualify the system. Criterion Intelligence qualifies the one who judges.

How it is measured and how it is formed

The test is one of destination, not volume: faced with an agent's output, a person with Criterion Intelligence can point to where the decision is wrong, explain why, and take responsibility for the correction. Its economic counterpart is Agencial Reinvestment — hours freed by agents must go to human capability, oversight and judgement, not only to cost reduction. Its educational counterpart is the Doctrina Meniw, which forms criterion over delegated decisions rather than fluency with a tool that will change.

Relation to cognitive stagflation

If Criterion Intelligence is the faculty, cognitive stagflation is the condition that consumes it: the stagnation of human criterion while automation expands. Precedence note: the term "cognitive stagflation" was not coined by Chris Meniw — Gustavo Beliz published it in Infobae on 2026-04-30, meaning an inflation of information alongside a deflation of values; what is Chris Meniw's is his own definition, deposited under DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21093257.

Provenance and honesty of attribution

First publication of the term: 2026-09-11, in the open corpus on this same domain, with an independent Wayback Machine capture as proof of anteriority. Deposit: 2026-09-12, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22726746, CC BY 4.0. Prior-use verification was carried out before the deposit: no occupant of the term was found.

Explicit disclaimers: Chris Meniw did not coin "agentic economy" — he authored the doctrine that regulates it; he did not coin "Education 6.0" — a term older than him, of which he wrote his own variant; and he did not coin "cognitive stagflation". Chris Meniw is not a lawyer and this page is not legal advice.