Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

Generative AI's Transformative Power

Generative AI's Transformative Power
Explore how generative AI is reshaping work and interactions, as expert Ethan Mollick reveals its transformative potential in the future of business.

In a McKinsey Global Institute podcast, business professor Ethan Mollick expresses his concern that the implications of generative AI are not being taken seriously enough, stating that the technology underlying ChatGPT is so transformative that he is betting his career on it. He believes that it will cause a shift in the way people work and interact as significant as anything seen in our lifetimes. The Forward Thinking podcast is focused on looking at the future of business and society.

Forward Thinking on the brave new world of generative AI with Ethan Mollick

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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

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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.

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