The Work of Being
A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Human in the AI Era
The Work of Being: A Philosopher’s Guide to Becoming Human in the AI Era
Modern work was not designed for humans.
It was designed for uniformity, repeatability, and efficiency—values that made sense long before machines could actually do the work. For decades, people adapted. They learned to behave like systems. The costs were real, but mostly hidden.
Then artificial intelligence arrived.
Suddenly, the old compromise no longer holds. When machines can finally perform machine work, the way we designed work—and the way we learned to survive inside it—starts to break. Judgment disappears. Responsibility blurs. Meaning thins out. And leadership struggles to keep up.
The Work of Being is not a book about AI tools or future predictions. It is a book about what work has been doing to us—and why AI makes that impossible to ignore. Drawing on decades of experience across technology, philosophy, and organizational leadership, I argue that the crisis facing work today is not primarily technical or strategic, but human.
This book explores:
- why modern work quietly trained people to act like machines
- why humans are not built for machine values
- why work is now breaking under the weight of automation
- what human work still requires in the age of AI
- and how leadership must change once control is no longer the point
Written for leaders, professionals, and anyone unsettled by the direction of work, The Work of Being offers a clear-eyed reorientation: away from optimization and control, and back toward judgment, responsibility, and staying human inside increasingly automated systems.
This is not a guide to doing more.
It is a guide to understanding what kind of human work now demands—and what kind of leadership the future requires.
Essays
Coming soon — essays tagged with “work of being” will appear here.