Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· artificial-intelligence · business

AI didn't deskill us, we were already deskilled

This article gets it half right.

AI isn’t deskilling workers. It’s revealing how many of us were already deskilled—trained to follow scripts, fill templates, and optimize compliance instead of thinking.

The real threat isn’t the tool. It’s that we built work systems that never required judgment in the first place. We turned people into process executors, then act surprised when a machine does it better.

If your job can be automated by today’s AI, the problem isn’t the technology. It’s that the work was already mechanical. We just called it a career.

The question isn’t whether AI deskills us. It’s whether we’ll use this moment to reclaim the capacities we let atrophy.

Bosses think AI will boost productivity — but it’s actually deskilling workers, a professor says

Why customer tools are organized wrong

This article reveals a fundamental flaw in how customer support tools are designed—organizing by interaction type instead of by customer—and explains why this fragmentation wastes time and obscures the full picture you need to help users effectively.

Infrastructure shapes thought

The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.

Server-Side Dashboard Architecture: Why Moving Data Fetching Off the Browser Changes Everything

How choosing server-side rendering solved security, CORS, and credential management problems I didn't know I had.

The work of being available now

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The practice of work in progress

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

Building in public is broken — here's how to fix your signal-to-noise ratio

Building in public promised accountability and community. It delivered content production under a different name. Most builders now spend more time documenting work than doing it, trapped in a perform

You can't skip the hard part

Reskilling won't save you. Frameworks won't save you. The work of becoming human again is personal, uncomfortable, and has no shortcut.

Dev reflection - February 14, 2026

So I want to talk about archiving. Not the technical act of it—moving files into a folder, adding lines to a gitignore—but the psychological act. The decision to say: this thing is done. Not broken...

Redefining Leadership: Embracing Human Judgment Amid AI Disruption

This article offers a critical perspective on how AI is reshaping the job market and challenges leaders to focus on uniquely human skills like judgment and responsibility, providing valuable insights for anyone interested in the future of work and leadership.

Is Automation the Key to Organizational Resilience?

Discover how automation enhances organizational resilience while emphasizing the vital role of human creativity in driving true innovation.

Article analysis: Maximizing Organizational Productivity: Analyzing AI's Transformative Potential

Unlock the potential of AI to enhance efficiency, streamline processes, and boost productivity in your organization with actionable insights and real-world...