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Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· artificial-intelligence · found

Bookmark: AI is going to eliminate way more jobs than anyone realizes

AI is set to disrupt millions of jobs, demanding urgent workforce reskilling while creating new opportunities in the evolving job market.

I’ve been reading Emil Skandul’s piece on AI’s impact on the global economy. It’s fascinating to see how AI could disrupt millions of jobs while unlocking massive opportunities. Skandul makes a compelling case for urgent workforce reskilling. The future is coming at us faster than I expected.

A compelling quote from the article is: “I do not think we’ll see mass unemployment," Brynjolfsson, who anticipates AI spreading faster than other general-purpose technologies, told me. “But I do think we’ll see mass disruption, where a lot of wages for some jobs will fall, wages for other jobs will rise, and we’ll be shifting around into demand for different kinds of skills. They’ll have to be a lot of reallocation of labor and rescaling of labor with winners and losers.”

AI is going to eliminate way more jobs than anyone realizes

The agent-shaped org chart

Every real org has the same topology: principal, role-holder, specialists. Staff AI maps onto it, node for node, and the cost collapse shows up in the deliverables that were always just human-handoff overhead.

AI as staff, not software

Two frames for what AI is doing to work. The tool frame makes tools smarter. The staff frame makes roles unnecessary. Those aren't the same product, the same company, or the same industry.

Knowledge work was never work

Knowledge work was always coordination between humans who couldn't share state directly. The artifacts were never the work. They were the overhead — and AI just made the overhead optional.

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.

The file I almost made twice

A small operational footgun that runs everywhere — building a parallel system when the one you have is fine.

The actor doesn't get to be the verifier

The worker isn't lying. The worker is reporting what it thought it did, which is always one step removed from what the world actually shows. The fix isn't more self-honesty. The fix is a different pair of eyes.

Shopping is the last mile

Every meal planning app treats cooking as the hard problem and shopping as a logistics detail. They have it backwards. Cooking is mostly solved. Shopping is the last mile.

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.

Bookmark: The next wave of automation: Will AI disrupt more high-skill jobs?

Explore how AI is reshaping high-skill jobs, driving the need for new skills and offering opportunities in a rapidly evolving job market.

Bookmark: 41% of employers worldwide say they’ll reduce staff by 2030 due to AI

Explore how AI will reshape the workforce by 2030, with 41% of employers expecting staff reductions and new job opportunities emerging.