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Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· business · found

Coming crisis for commercial leases

Explore the looming crisis in commercial leases as office vacancies soar and remote work reshapes demand for office spaces.

“During the first three months of 2023, U.S. office vacancy topped 20 percent for the first time in decades. In San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston, vacancy rates are as high as 25 percent. These figures understate the severity of the crisis because they only cover spaces that are no longer leased. Most office leases were signed before the pandemic and have yet to come up for renewal. Actual office use points to a further decrease in demand. Attendance in the 10 largest business districts is still below 50 percent of its pre-COVID level, as white-collar employees spend an estimated 28 percent of their workdays at home.”—The Next Crisis Will Start With Empty Office Buildings

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.

Manual fluency is the prerequisite for agent supervision

You cannot responsibly automate what you cannot do manually. AI agents speed up work for people who already know how to do it. They do not replace the need to learn the work in the first place.

The gun you didn't need

Every organization has loaded weapons lying around that nobody remembers loading. The most dangerous capability in any system is the one you built 'just in case.'

Nobody promotes you to operator

There's a moment in every project where the work stops being about building and starts being about keeping things running. Nobody announces this transition. Nobody gives you new tools for it. And most people keep building long past the point where they should have stopped.

Embracing the AI workforce

Discover how AI enhances the workplace by fostering collaboration and spontaneity, offering a fresh alternative to traditional office dynamics.

The future of remote work

Explore the evolving landscape of remote work, highlighting employee preferences and the balance between flexibility and social interaction.

GPT-4 pitches more successful

Discover how GPT-4-generated pitches outperform human ones, securing funding three times more effectively across various industries.