Frozen Badges to Flourishing Minds in the Age of AI
How Policing Conditions Out the Curiosity It Needs Most
A few weeks ago, I read a story that has kept replaying in my head.
Imagine this: A classroom full of kids. A simple balance scale. Curiosity everywhere. Hands on, questions flowing, minds working.
And then it stops.
A teacher interrupts a group of kids who are tinkering with an old-fashioned balance scale. “Enough of that,” she says. “There’s no time for experiments. We’re doing science.”
It seems absurd when you hear it out loud. No time for experiments during science class. But according to the story, that is exactly what she said.
Maybe it is sticking with me because I remember playing with one of those “old-fashioned” scales as a kid. And then later, as a young patrol officer, I used that same kind of scale to weigh marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other contraband confiscated on patrol. We didn’t trust the emerging digital scales until after the turn of the century. So old-school was still fashionable, if not also a bit ridiculous.
But the longer you sit and chew on it, the more uncomfortable it becomes. Because it is not just a classroom problem.
It is a systems problem. And policing is not immune to it.
The essay that introduced me to this story was written by Peter Diamandis (see references). It reframed something I had felt for a long time but had not fully articulated. His central claim was simple but powerful: your brain is not just something you use. It is something you train. And the dial that controls how fast it learns is curiosity.
Curiosity trumps interest and intelligence.
Diamandis draws a comparison between the human brain and modern artificial intelligence systems. Both learn through prediction and feedback. Both adjust based on error. Both improve through repetition. But there is one critical difference. AI models have a learning rate set by engineers (at least for now). Humans have a learning rate set by their willingness to stay curious. And when that curiosity slows, the system does not just slow down. It freezes.
Which brings me to a conversation I had with a police chief in the days before I read that article.
“We will never use AI report writing software.”
As a consultant, I spend time with police leaders from around the country in a variety of settings. I’d like to say comments like this are out of the ordinary, but they are not. The emphatic emphasis on never is also familiar.
To be fair, I understand the instinct. AI in policing raises legitimate questions about accuracy, liability, chain of custody, and public trust. A leader who wants to see the evidence before committing is not wrong to pause. The problem is not the “tactical” pause. It is when the pause becomes permanent, when caution calcifies into refusal, and refusal gets confounded with principle.
That is what a frozen model looks like. It’s not incompetence or ignorance, but something more subtle: a leader who has stopped updating.
The phrases are familiar. We have all heard them.
“This is how we have always done it.”
“That will never work here.”
“The chief/prosecutor/judge/community will not allow it.”
“We do not need that technology.”
“These new ideas are a fad.”
At first take, it can sound like confidence, if not arrogance. In reality, it is often cognitive stagnation. And in a profession that operates in rapidly changing conditions, stagnation is not neutral. It is more insidious and borders on negligence.
Consider the “triple beam” balance scale again. For those of you who have been around long enough, do you remember those conversations when digital scales first appeared in evidence rooms? I do. The resistance was real. The skepticism was real! And eventually, the transition happened anyway. Change is not always easy or linear. But failure to evolve creates the danger, not the change itself. Does this remind any of you veterans of conversations about computers in cars, Google Maps vs. map books, digital cameras for capturing evidence, or, most recently, anything involving AI?
Diamandis goes further than mindset. He cites neuroscience showing that curiosity is not just an attitude. It is a biological event.
When you are genuinely curious, your brain activates the same reward circuitry tied to survival and motivation. Dopamine is released. Attention sharpens. Memory strengthens. In one study, when subjects were placed in a state of curiosity, they did not just remember the answer to the question they cared about; they remembered unrelated information that appeared at the same time. Curiosity did not just improve learning. It amplified the entire system.
That matters more than we might think, because policing is a profession that slowly conditions people to stop being curious. Not intentionally, it is a byproduct of structure.
Police academies teach fundamentals. They have to. Law, tactics, policy, and procedure are all essential. But somewhere along the way, the emphasis shifts from understanding to compliance. You learn what to do. You learn how to do it. And eventually, you stop asking why. There is no time for experiments. There is only time for doing the job. I’d like to think this is more of an issue in understaffed or just high-call-volume agencies, but I’ve seen it in low-crime suburban areas just as much as any other jurisdiction. Policing becomes a “check the box” activity.
Which works fine if the job never changes. But everything about policing is changing. Crime evolves. Technology evolves. Community expectations evolve. The environment is not static, yet too often the thinking is. We are preparing people to operate in the future using mental models built for the past.
This is where Carol Dweck’s work moves from motivational concept to operational reality. Dweck’s distinction between fixed and growth mindsets is simple on the surface: some people believe their abilities are set, while others believe they can improve. But when you layer in what Diamandis describes, mindset starts to look less like attitude and more like biology.
A growth-oriented, curious brain continues to form connections. It adapts and updates. A fixed mindset brain protects what it already knows. It resists new information. It becomes efficient, but rigid. In policing, that rigidity can look like strength and confidence, but it can also be the beginning of a decline.
Research in cognitive science adds another dimension: people who remain curious and engaged build greater cognitive reserve over time. They maintain function longer. They adapt better to stress. They recover more effectively. In a profession defined by chronic stress, disrupted sleep, and repeated exposure to trauma, that is not a small detail. It is an operational variable.
Psychologist Martin Seligman offers a framework for understanding what happens when these conditions are present, and what erodes when they are not. In his book Flourish, Seligman argues that the goal of a meaningful life is not simply to reduce suffering. It is to flourish. And flourishing is built on five elements: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.
On paper, it sounds like something that belongs in a different profession. But when you look closer, it maps directly onto policing.
Positive emotion is not about ignoring danger. It is about preventing the brain from being trapped in a constant threat loop. Engagement is the difference between an officer who is mentally present and one who is going through the motions. Relationships determine whether an officer has support or isolation, connection or cynicism. Meaning is the reason most people put the badge on in the first place, and the thing many lose along the way. Accomplishment is not just about statistics or rank. It is about growth, mastery, and progress.
When these elements are present, people function at a higher level. When they are absent, something else takes hold. Seligman calls it languishing, not failing or collapsing, but existing in a state where performance is possible, and fulfillment is gone.
In policing, languishing is easy to spot yet equally easy to miss if you do not know what to look for. The officer still shows up. The reports still get written. The calls still get handled. But the curiosity is gone. The engagement is gone. The meaning is fading. What was once excitement and energy has become lethargy and indifference. Without those five elements, the system degrades, bit by bit, day after day.
This is where leadership becomes the deciding factor, and where the work gets genuinely hard.
In the summer of 2014, I attended the State and Local Leaders program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. One of the most useful ideas I brought home came from leadership professor Marty Linsky. In his book Leadership on the Line, Linsky and his colleagues draw a critical distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges.
Technical problems have known solutions. You apply the right expertise, and they get resolved. Adaptive challenges are different. They require people to change their behaviors, their assumptions, sometimes their identities. Most of the issues facing policing today are not technical. They are adaptive.
Adaptive work is uncomfortable. It forces leaders to question long-standing practices. It challenges identity. It creates resistance. And Linsky’s challenge to the class was direct: how far are you willing to go to lead the necessary change?
Building a culture where officers can flourish is not accomplished by adding a wellness program and calling it progress. It requires confronting the things everyone knows are there, but few want to touch.
Shift structures that destroy sleep.
Overtime systems that reward exhaustion.
Training models that prioritize compliance over curiosity.
Cultural norms that equate vulnerability with weakness.
Resistance to tools and technology that could improve performance because they challenge tradition.
These are not just policy issues. They are biological decisions. Every time a leader chooses to maintain a system that degrades sleep, increases stress, or suppresses learning, they are making a choice about the long-term cognitive and emotional capacity of their people. They are shaping the operating system, not just for the organization, but for the human beings within it.
Which brings me back to that Chief.
His resistance to AI report-writing software is not unique. It is, in many ways, the default posture of a profession that has historically been asked to be consistent, cautious, and controlled. Those are not bad instincts. They are just insufficient for the moment we are in.
The officer of the future will not be defined solely by toughness or experience. They will be defined by their ability to learn, adapt, and maintain their capacity under stress. They will be curious. They will be engaged. They will be connected to purpose. They will continue to evolve.
Which brings us back to the classroom. The kids with the balance scale were not off task. They were doing exactly what learning looks like. The system just could not accommodate it because old paradigms still rule the room.
Policing faces the same choice. It can continue to prioritize control and efficiency at the expense of curiosity and adaptation. Or it can create space for the kind of learning that allows people to evolve alongside the environment in which they operate.
The question is not whether policing can survive. It has proven that it can. The question is whether it can continue to learn.
Because the moment it stops, it is no longer policing the present. It is enforcing the past.
And the future will not wait for it to catch up.
References
Peter Diamandis (2024). Your Brain’s Learning Rate: Why Curiosity Is the Most Powerful Upgrade for Your Neurons. Essay exploring curiosity as a biological driver of learning, drawing parallels between human cognition and artificial intelligence systems.
Carol Dweck (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House. Foundational work on fixed versus growth mindset and its impact on learning, performance, and resilience.
Martin Seligman (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. New York: Free Press. Introduces the PERMA model of well-being: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.
Marty Linsky, Ronald Heifetz, & Grashow, A. (2009). Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading. Boston: Harvard Business Press. Explores adaptive leadership, the distinction between technical and adaptive challenges, and the personal cost of leading change.
Gruber, M. J., Gelman, B. D., & Ranganath, C. (2014). States of curiosity modulate hippocampus-dependent learning via the dopaminergic circuit. Neuron, 84(2), 486–496. Demonstrates how curiosity enhances memory and activates reward-related brain regions.
Engel, S. (2011). Children’s Need to Know: Curiosity in Schools. Harvard Educational Review, 81(4), 625–645. Documents the dramatic decline in student questioning and curiosity in structured learning environments.
Swan, G. E., & Carmelli, D. (1996). Curiosity and mortality in aging adults. Longitudinal research linking higher curiosity levels with increased longevity.
Mischler, G., et al. (2024). Neural representations in large language models and human speech processing. Nature Machine Intelligence. Explores parallels between artificial neural networks and human brain activity.
Gross, M. E., & Schooler, J. W. (2025). Enhancing curiosity through daily behavioral interventions. Mindfulness Journal. Evidence that curiosity can be trained and increased through structured practices.
This is the future of policing. Great article.