In an era where artificial intelligence dominates headlines and boardroom agendas, one Northern Virginia company is asking the question others have overlooked: What happens to human performance when AI does most of the thinking?

HupSide, co-founded by Jonathan Aberman, is building the tools to answer that question, not with more automation, but with a new category of measurement: Original Intelligence Quotient, or OIQ.

“AI is an extraordinary accelerator. It removes friction, compresses timelines, and enables productivity that would have been unimaginable five years ago. But acceleration only matters if humans are deciding where to go.”
– Jonathan Aberman, Co-Founder and CEO –

From AI Adoption to Human Capability

Jonathan Aberman has spent decades at the intersection of technology, business strategy, and innovation ecosystems. As the founder of Tandem NSI, an early-stage venture firm, and a longtime advisor to enterprise and government leaders, he has watched the AI revolution unfold from the inside.

What he saw troubled him. Organizations were pouring resources into AI tools, but no one was tracking how those tools were affecting the people using them. Were employees becoming more creative, more capable, more original in their thinking? Or were they becoming more dependent, more passive, more uniform?

“That blind spot was everywhere. Leaders could see efficiency metrics, usage data, and output volume. What they could not see was who was actually expanding the idea space once AI was involved.”
– Jonathan Aberman, Co-Founder and CEO –

That realization became the seed for HupSide.

Defining Original Intelligence

At the core of HupSide’s work is a proprietary framework for measuring what the company calls Original Intelligence, the uniquely human capacity to generate novel, contextually relevant ideas that AI alone cannot produce. While AI excels at pattern recognition, optimization, and synthesis, original intelligence is about divergence: the ability to think laterally, challenge assumptions, and create something that did not previously exist.

HupSide’s OIQ assessment captures this capacity through a proprietary methodology that evaluates how individuals and teams think, not just what they produce. It examines cognitive patterns, decision-making tendencies, and creative output in AI-augmented environments, providing leaders with a measurable, actionable view of human performance in the age of AI.

Innovation Beyond Efficiency

For enterprise leaders, the implications are significant. Most organizations today measure AI success by efficiency gains: time saved, costs reduced, processes automated. But HupSide argues that this lens is incomplete and potentially dangerous.

If AI handles routine cognitive tasks, and humans are not actively developing their capacity for original thought, organizations risk a slow erosion of the very capabilities that drive innovation, strategy, and competitive differentiation.

“In an AI-saturated world, efficiency is table stakes. Originality is the advantage.”
– Jonathan Aberman, Co-Founder and CEO –

HupSide’s platform is designed to help organizations identify where original intelligence is thriving, where it is at risk, and how to cultivate it systematically. The company works with enterprise clients to integrate OIQ measurement into talent development, team composition, and innovation strategy.

A Human-Centered Future for AI

Looking ahead, HupSide envisions a world where AI and human intelligence are not in competition but in balance. The company is building toward a future where every organization has visibility into its most important and least measured asset: the originality of its people.

Jonathan sees this as both an economic imperative and a cultural one. As AI becomes more capable, the organizations that thrive will be those that invest not just in technology, but in the human capacities that technology cannot replicate.

“We are not anti-AI. We are pro-human. The companies that understand the difference will define the next era of innovation.”
– Jonathan Aberman, Co-Founder and CEO –

From its base in Northern Virginia, HupSide is positioning itself at the frontier of a new discipline: human performance intelligence in the age of AI. For leaders navigating the rapid integration of AI into every aspect of work, HupSide offers something no algorithm can, a way to see, measure, and strengthen the human advantage.