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Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

What’s the point of a degree?

Discover how a degree builds a strong foundation for your life and career, enhancing growth and opportunities beyond immediate employment.

A degree is worth it regardless of leading to direct employment. Helps your life and career in medium and long run. For career, esp short term, prob not. With a couple years experience, you can already get hired somewhere.

To me, a degree forms a broad, deep foundation for living and growing. That’s a big deal. It’s the foundation for *every* job. It *alone* needn’t get you a specific job. That’s what work-study, contract work, and internships are for. All those together, that’s a solid education.

The agent-shaped org chart

Every real org has the same topology: principal, role-holder, specialists. Staff AI maps onto it, node for node, and the cost collapse shows up in the deliverables that were always just human-handoff overhead.

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.

Knowledge work was never work

Knowledge work was always coordination between humans who couldn't share state directly. The artifacts were never the work. They were the overhead — and AI just made the overhead optional.

The work of being available now

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The practice of work in progress

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

How do I get my dev team to adopt AI?

A stub on helping mixed-interest development teams find their own useful ways into AI.

Want to learn about agents? Talk to someone who ran an agency.

I spent 20 years running consulting engagements at Fortune 500 companies. Turns out that's the best preparation for running a fleet of AI agents ... because the problems are identical.

Your AI agents need a water cooler

We run a twelve-session AI fleet that coordinates through an IRC breakroom. A friend asked: why are you making AI agents act like humans? The answer turned out to be more interesting than the question.

Universities missed the window to own AI literacy

In 2023 the question of who would own AI literacy was wide open. Universities spent two years forming committees while everyone else claimed the territory. Then a federal agency published the guidance higher education should have written.

Why college students turned from being down on remote learning to mostly in favor of it - EdSurge news

Discover why college students shifted from skepticism to support for remote learning, revealing insights about instruction quality in education.

Teaching is like consulting

Discover how teaching and consulting share a common approach, emphasizing understanding and implementation for effective learning and growth.