If it can be automated, it wasn't the work
I keep noticing people talk about AI like it’s a wave that’s about to hit them.
“Will it take my job?” “How do we adopt it fast enough?” “How do we protect ourselves?”
Those are understandable questions. They’re also a little late. If AI can do your job, the problem isn’t the AI. The problem is that your job was never designed to require the human part of you.
Most organizations have spent decades trying to remove judgment from work. Scripts. Processes. Compliance. “Just follow the playbook.” It worked because humans are adaptable. We learned to shrink.
Now the machines showed up. And they’re better at machine-work than we ever were.
Rule: if the work can be automated end-to-end, it wasn’t the work.
The work is what’s left. That’s the human era.
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