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Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· found · innovation · technology

It’s going to take a century for artifical intelligence to be able to perform most human jobs. But there are going to be some key developments during the next decade.

It’s going to take a century for artifical intelligence to be able to perform most human jobs. But there are going to be some key developments during the next decade.

Explore how AI will transform jobs in the next decade, from enhancing security to automating coding, reshaping the future of work.

According to a survey of leading AI researchers, all human tasks may become highly automatable by 2116. While this prediction seems far off, it is worth noting that it has been moved up by 50 years from the original estimate of 2164. Short-term developments are also expected to reshape IT and business professionals’ jobs within the next five to 10 years. The survey highlights several capabilities that AI will achieve in the near future, including finding and patching security flaws, building websites, offering phone banking services, writing Python code, finetuning large language models, and conducting machine-learning studies and writing papers. The researchers attribute the development of AI to the drop in computing costs.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-is-what-ai-will-produce-during-the-next-decade-and-beyond/

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.

Many businesses are not yet prepared to fully reap the benefits of AI.

Unlock AI's true potential for your business by integrating it into your strategy, boosting productivity, and enhancing customer experiences.

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Explore the reality of generative AI in 2024 as hype fades, revealing limitations, job displacement, and the need for regulation.

Artificial intelligence could hit three in five workers — Possibly replacing their jobs. The warning comes in a new international monetary fund report on the future of work. It warned of lower sala…

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