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Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· philosophy · technology · 1 min read

The semiotics of networked content

Explore how networked content transcends platforms, focusing on the significance of signs over replication in the evolving digital landscape.

Working on content interop super-ontology in the #mastodon, #micro.blog, #twitter, #feedland, and #wordpress multiverse.

Posts are actual pieces of content. They are mostly made on the platform where you find them.

Timelines are views into (yours and others’) posts. These views are made possible by transmitting information about the post via #RSS (or something else) and aggregating into a timeline. Timelines can include feeds from yours or others’ sources.

What’s interesting is that timelines can also be published and consumed, also via #rss.

This means that, if you consume a feed, you don’t know if the source-content in the feed originates with that feed. Feed elements could “pass through” as signs to their sources. In fact, it doesn’t even matter.

In this sense, we don’t want to replicate content around the networks, we want to replicate signs.

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.

ActivityPub spec

Explore the ActivityPub specification to understand how to write effective specs and enhance your web development skills.

The ur-post

Explore the concept of the ur-post and its role in microblogging, sources, and references in the digital content landscape.

Embracing the AI workforce

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