Rethinking AI impact on job market
Explore how AI's unpredictable evolution shapes the job market, challenging the notion of steering technology for worker protection.
This is a good argument to just keep running with things. It’s inevitable that we would get too much wrong if we tried to engineer the job market to prevent impact from AI.
“It’s understandable that we might want to steer or shape the development of AI technology so that it maximizes the benefits for workers, and avoids the “replacement” part. But there is a big problem with the idea — namely that no one, including Daron Acemoglu or any economist, has any idea how to predict which technologies will augment humans and which will simply replace their labor.”—Why trying to shape AI innovation to protect workers is a bad idea
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.
The impact of AI on white-collar jobs
Explore how AI transforms white-collar jobs, highlighting the balance between automation and the enduring value of skilled human work.
The threat of AI to white-collar jobs
Explore how AI threatens high-wage white-collar jobs, challenging talent and market dynamics in today's workforce landscape.
The entrepreneurial revolution facilitated by AI
Discover how AI is transforming entrepreneurship by empowering founders with personalized support, leading to a new era of innovation and opportunity.