Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· artificial-intelligence

Bookmark: What fully automated firms will look like

Bookmark: What fully automated firms will look like

Explore how fully automated firms will revolutionize business operations with AI, optimizing talent and decision-making for unprecedented growth.

“AI firms won’t be constrained by what’s scarce or abundant in human skill distributions – they can optimize for whatever abilities are most valuable."> What fully automated firms will look like

The concept of fully automated firms posits a radical transformation in business operations through artificial general intelligences (AGIs). Such entities would transcend the capabilities of human organizations by eliminating current bottlenecks in hiring and training. With AI, firms could replicate not only individual, high-caliber talent but also entire successful teams, propelling unprecedented growth and coordination. The operations of management and decision-making would see the most significant evolution, as AI managers—sans human limitations—could oversee extensive operations with the backing of scalable computing power. This would create highly specialized yet cohesive operations, devoid of the traditional principal-agent problem seen in human firms. With the seamless replication and merging of AI “employees,” knowledge transfer would reach levels unseen in any human-run organization. Future automated firms would leverage extensive AGI capabilities to innovate and propagate ideas efficiently, potentially resulting in larger and more efficient entities. However, the competitive landscape could remain dynamic through market mechanisms, ensuring firms continue to adapt by balancing internal efficiencies with external market demands

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.

Dev reflection - February 20, 2026

I want to talk about the difference between execution and verification. Because something happened this week that made the distinction painfully clear, and I think it matters far beyond software.

Dev reflection - February 18, 2026

There's a moment in any system—a team, a company, a workflow—where the thing you've been optimizing for stops being the constraint. And you don't notice right away. You keep pushing on the old bott...

Dev reflection - February 17, 2026

I want to talk about staging areas. Not the technical kind—the human kind. The places where work goes to sit. The inbox you check before forwarding. The draft folder. The approval queue. The meetin...

Bookmark: Rumors are swirling that OpenAI is on the brink of agi and asi

OpenAI may be nearing breakthroughs in AGI and ASI, with hints of self-improving models and industry anticipation for significant updates.

Bookmark: Sam Altman says OpenAI’s new o3 ‘reasoning’ models begin the ‘next phase’ of AI. Is this agi?

Explore how OpenAI's new o3 reasoning models could redefine AI and usher in the next phase toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Article analysis: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pens a smart look at our AI future

Explore Dario Amodei's insightful analysis on AI's potential to revolutionize biology, neuroscience, and innovation in the near future.