AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

It has, but the salary isn't high enough to fire underperformers, because you get what you get at 10 dollars an hour. It's the reverse of the tech situation you're likely used to - where employers gatekeep as hard as they can and are always desperate. In retail etc there's no gatekeeping but there's also no quality guarantee

This may be true, actually. The reason middle managenent exists is because the greed-driven owners hate talking to justice-driven workers, but need them to do the work.

The Shannon number doesn't exist for a middle management role, which could consist of so many variations from organization to organization. I don't disagree that AI assisted decision making is a thing that's happening, but I think the author is naively understating just how far away we are from 1:1 human to AI replacement.

Feeding people instructions is actually hard.

On the low end of the job market, being able to follow instructions, especially written instructions, is a skill that not everyone has. I suspect it's more economical to have a human supervisor instead of narrowing your applicant pool to people who can follow written instructions.

(Replacing written instructions with video instructions etc doesn't make things much easier.)

Similarly, common sense judgement is also a skill. It's easier to have a human supervisor embody some of that judgement, then to find a way to distill it all down into formal rules.

In the context of your idea, that also means figuring out who is actually failing and needs to be fired.

That all being said: for decades or even centuries the economy has already been moving in the direction you are suggesting.

You don't need an app for that: just write down the rules on a piece of paper or even a clay tablet.

I wonder how good middle managers can be in retail. I would guess good staff can always turn around a crisis.

And this is why I think AI will either replace all of us or just change the way we work.

Software will and does kill jobs, but only those that are easy to move around anyway. Take generated art for an example: If a simple prompt that you can send to a contractor is enough to satisfy your needs there is a good chance that you are already or will be able to replace artists with AI, but as soon as you want something more, AI alone will not be able to help you. After all an AI will not be able to thrive in an organic human environment, at least for the forseeable future.

The moment the latter is possible, it is a matter of time that AI gives all of us the option to slack off forever.