How generative AI changes productivity

Discover how generative AI boosts productivity by reducing the costs of cognition and creativity, transforming the way we work and innovate.

“KARIM LAKHANI: Yeah, I would say the cost of cognition, the cost of creativity is going to massively decline with generative AI.”

(https://hbr.org/podcast/2023/05/how-generative-ai-changes-productivity)

Featured writing

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.

Books

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.

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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.

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