Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

Bookmark: What fully automated firms will look like

Bookmark: What fully automated firms will look like
Explore how fully automated firms will revolutionize business operations with AI, optimizing talent and decision-making for unprecedented growth.

“AI firms won’t be constrained by what’s scarce or abundant in human skill distributions – they can optimize for whatever abilities are most valuable."> What fully automated firms will look like

The concept of fully automated firms posits a radical transformation in business operations through artificial general intelligences (AGIs). Such entities would transcend the capabilities of human organizations by eliminating current bottlenecks in hiring and training. With AI, firms could replicate not only individual, high-caliber talent but also entire successful teams, propelling unprecedented growth and coordination. The operations of management and decision-making would see the most significant evolution, as AI managers—sans human limitations—could oversee extensive operations with the backing of scalable computing power. This would create highly specialized yet cohesive operations, devoid of the traditional principal-agent problem seen in human firms. With the seamless replication and merging of AI “employees,” knowledge transfer would reach levels unseen in any human-run organization. Future automated firms would leverage extensive AGI capabilities to innovate and propagate ideas efficiently, potentially resulting in larger and more efficient entities. However, the competitive landscape could remain dynamic through market mechanisms, ensuring firms continue to adapt by balancing internal efficiencies with external market demands


Featured writing

Why customer tools are organized wrong

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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

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Bookmark: Sam Altman says OpenAI’s new o3 ‘reasoning’ models begin the ‘next phase’ of AI. Is this AGI?

Explore how OpenAI's new o3 reasoning models could redefine AI and usher in the next phase toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Article analysis: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pens a smart look at our AI future

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