Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

The Threat of AI to White-Collar Jobs

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.

“My colleague Aki Ito wrote about how AI will ultimately harm the most talented people in white collar jobs, because it will make it harder for them justify sky-high wages.” —What History Says About AI’s Threat to Jobs and White-Collar Work


Featured writing

Why customer tools are organized wrong

This article reveals a fundamental flaw in how customer support tools are designed—organizing by interaction type instead of by customer—and explains why this fragmentation wastes time and obscures the full picture you need to help users effectively.

Busy is not a state

We've built work cultures that reward activity, even when nothing actually changes. In technical systems, activity doesn't count—only state change does. This essay explores why "busy" has become the most misleading signal we have, and how focusing on state instead of motion makes work more honest, less draining, and actually productive.

Infrastructure shapes thought

The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.

Books

The Work of Being (in progress)

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The Practice of Work (in progress)

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

Recent writing

Dev reflection - January 31, 2026

I've been thinking about what happens when your tools start asking better questions than you do.

Dev reflection - January 30, 2026

So here's something that happened yesterday that I'm still thinking about. Seven different projects—completely unrelated work, different domains, different goals—all hit the same wall on the same d...

Dev reflection - January 29, 2026

So here's something I've been sitting with. You finish a piece of work. You ship it. Everything looks good. And then production starts teaching you that you weren't actually done.

Notes and related thinking

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 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.

Maximizing Generative AI Potential

Unlock the full potential of generative AI by customizing models tailored to your business needs, enhancing efficiency and security.