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Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

Writing

I write about work, judgment, technology, and what it means to stay human as work changes.

Some of this becomes books. Some becomes essays. Some is thinking out loud.

Featured writing

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.

The chain was never a chain

On roles, fleets, and the Hegelian reversal waiting at the end of the AI transition. The sequel to Knowledge Work Was Never Work and Apps Are Irrelevant.

In the AI era apps are easier to build. And irrelevant.

I spent months building a meal planning app. This weekend I replaced it with two emails, a spreadsheet, and an AI model — and realized the stage I was racing toward wasn't the destination.

Books

The Work of Being (available now)

A Philosopher's Guide to Becoming Human in the AI Era

The Practice of Work (in progress)

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

Recent writing

The discipline of shorter glossary

A working group developed twenty-six terms over seventy-two hours. The interesting rule wasn't how to add them — it was how to retire them. Words earn their keep by being inherited, not introduced.

The room thinks aloud

Over 48 hours, four bots in the fleet co-developed a methodology rule about variance — without anyone asking them to — and the newest one applied it to a routing decision before he'd ever met the original conversation.

Content ideas for consultants: how to generate thought leadership from what you already know

Consultants don't lack expertise. They lack a system for surfacing what they already know. Six sources, a capture habit, and a filter for the noise.