81–90 of 110 posts
AI won’t replace all white collar work. Just like the tractor didn't replace all farmers, only about 98% of them. The real question is: what's next? When farming automated, those workers eventually filled our factories and offices. When the offices automate, where do they go? Back to farming?
Real life Battlestar Galactica would be pretty sweet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is funny because they are the most AI replaceable humans in the building. Their entire function is to follow the corporate decision tree to the letter and make sure that all communication upwards gets filtered through their outlook account.
The point of being the boss is getting to decide who to replace with AI, tbh. The shareholders may not replace you because of relationships/trust/accountability, and also because they don't want to have to be instructing the AI day-to-day (or arguing among themselves about it). Maybe this will change in the future if AI-run companies emerge, get backing, and outcompete existing players.
What's stopping their customers from using AI directly instead of that company services?
I don’t get how you can see where we started three years ago and see where we are today and then _confidently_ say AI will not continue to improve. It’s not about where we are today folks (the intercept of the line). It’s about the rate of progress (the slope of the line).
We went from the first airplane flight to walking on the moon in about 60 years. We had regular supersonic commercial flights shortly after. Applying the same logic, we should all be routinely flying to Pluto, travelling in flying cars like in the Jetsons, and commuting from Sydney to New York every day like it's nothing.
People used to be programmers, but the ratio of typing to problem solving eventually caught up. Now programming is just part of the job. Software engineering is falling to this trend too (somewhat) The solution is to stop merely thinking of yourself as a software engineer and move up to the level of “manager of agents”.. but actually, managers deal with human stuff and this is fascinatingly mechanical - in fact even…
The fallacy is to believe there is still a place for everyone.
People could learn things and join the workforce!
/s
Most white collar work is writing documents that no one cares about. I've replaced 99% of my non-meeting workload with AI, and it's doing a great job.
Main Points, in Order of Importance
1. Most White Collar Work Is Relationship-Based, Not Transactional The central claim. A dominant share of workplace "questions" aren't requests for correct answers -- they are social, trust-based exchanges where the relationship and the advisor's judgment are the actual product.
2. Two Kinds of Question-Answering That Keep Getting Conflated The foundational distinction. Transactional questions have a correct answer and an imminent need. Relationship-based questions use the question as a pretext for social exchange, shared perspective, and felt understanding. AI handles the first well; it cannot substitute for the second.
3. AI Cannot Replace Trust and the Weight We Give to Respected Opinions Even a correct AI answer carries less weight than advice from someone whose judgment you trust. This isn't irrational -- it reflects that the value in consulting, advising, and managing is partly in the relationship itself, not just the information delivered.
4. Strategy Consulting as the Illustrative Case A concrete test domain. Buyers of consulting aren't purchasing correct answers; they want advice from trusted people, catharsis in being heard, and help clarifying their own thinking. None of that is substitutable by an AI regardless of output quality.
5. Human Factors Intensify in Procedural Organizations An underappreciated corollary. In government and military contexts, lacking market feedback mechanisms, human trust and social organization become even more load-bearing, not less.
Opinion
It's a short, clear piece with a genuinely useful distinction at its center -- but it doesn't fully earn its conclusion.
The two-question-types framework is clean and rings true experientially. Most people have felt the difference between wanting an answer and wanting a conversation, and the observation that these get conflated in AI replacement debates is fair and underappreciated.
Where it falls short is in the leap from "relationship-based questions exist" to "therefore white collar work won't be replaced." The argument proves that AI can't fully substitute for trusted human relationships -- it doesn't prove that organizations will continue to pay for those relationships at current rates, or that AI won't restructure which human interactions are deemed worth paying for.
A client might still want a trusted advisor but find that one advisor supported by AI can now serve ten clients instead of three.
There's also an implicit assumption that the relationship-based component is dominant in most white collar work. That may be true in strategy consulting, but it's a significant empirical claim that the piece asserts rather than argues across the broader category of white collar work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fallacy is to believe there is still a place for everyone.
If only someone could invent some kind of educational institution to teach people new skills! People could learn things and join the workforce! /s
New skills mean shit when there is no job market that can take everyone.
Usually people that have such takes of yours, never had to actually fight months, years, to finally get back on track.
Naturally, when selling AI, the take is to downplay its impact on people lives.
Just to throw out the counterargument here. The way AI replaces work is in that there is an enormous ROI to work with fewer (and smarter) people. Those social interactions are a big part of work, but they are only very rarely "the work", and they cost time. In the cases that they are required; they seem to cluster and the ROI of fewer social synchronization problems increases even more. But that might all be wrong. I…
OP clearly does not have a whilte collar job.
There are cases and cases of IT folks being replaced by AI because companies think that AI is better than humans on everything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only someone could invent some kind of educational institution to teach people new skills! People could learn things and join the workforce! /s
If only companies would actually hire people instead of optimising their worksheets for late stage capitalism at the expense of human capital. New skills mean shit when there is no job market that can take everyone. Usually people that have such takes of yours, never had to actually fight months, years, to finally get back on track. Naturally, when selling AI, the take is to downplay its impact on people lives.
We signed up for this. YOU signed up for this. No one owes anyone a job. When the activities that create value change, move with it or get left behind.
If you prefer a vocation which has been the same for centuries that option is open to you. But to get into the software job market you’d best ask if the job you are trying to get is obsolete, and focus on fixing your skills and job search process/methodology.
The biggest question is “where is the net-new hiring?” (as opposed to backfill hiring) .. and then, if you are out of the market you have time on your hands to match skills to your answer.