Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

Bookmark: AI is going to eliminate way more jobs than anyone realizes

AI is set to disrupt millions of jobs, demanding urgent workforce reskilling while creating new opportunities in the evolving job market.

I’ve been reading Emil Skandul’s piece on AI’s impact on the global economy. It’s fascinating to see how AI could disrupt millions of jobs while unlocking massive opportunities. Skandul makes a compelling case for urgent workforce reskilling. The future is coming at us faster than I expected.

A compelling quote from the article is: “I do not think we’ll see mass unemployment," Brynjolfsson, who anticipates AI spreading faster than other general-purpose technologies, told me. “But I do think we’ll see mass disruption, where a lot of wages for some jobs will fall, wages for other jobs will rise, and we’ll be shifting around into demand for different kinds of skills. They’ll have to be a lot of reallocation of labor and rescaling of labor with winners and losers.”

AI is going to eliminate way more jobs than anyone realizes


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.

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.

Server-Side Dashboard Architecture: Why Moving Data Fetching Off the Browser Changes Everything

How choosing server-side rendering solved security, CORS, and credential management problems I didn't know I had.

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

We always panic about new tools (and we're always wrong)

Every time a new tool emerges for making or manipulating symbols, we panic. The pattern is so consistent it's almost embarrassing. Here's what happened each time.

Dev reflection - February 03, 2026

I've been thinking about constraints today. Not the kind that block you—the kind that clarify. There's a difference, and most people miss it.

When execution becomes cheap, ideas become expensive

This article reveals a fundamental shift in how organizations operate: as AI makes execution nearly instantaneous, the bottleneck has moved from implementation to decision-making. Understanding this transition is critical for anyone leading teams or making strategic choices in an AI-enabled world.

Notes and related thinking

Redefining Leadership: Embracing Human Judgment Amid AI Disruption

This article offers a critical perspective on how AI is reshaping the job market and challenges leaders to focus on uniquely human skills like judgment and responsibility, providing valuable insights for anyone interested in the future of work and leadership.

Bookmark: The Next Wave of Automation: Will AI Disrupt More High-Skill Jobs?

Explore how AI is reshaping high-skill jobs, driving the need for new skills and offering opportunities in a rapidly evolving job market.

Bookmark: 41% of employers worldwide say they’ll reduce staff by 2030 due to AI

Explore how AI will reshape the workforce by 2030, with 41% of employers expecting staff reductions and new job opportunities emerging.