Thank you for this wonderful piece. As a leader of a team feeling an urgency to figure out how we evolve in this new age, so we can have a voice in shaping that - rather than having it imposed on us - this gives me hope. It puts words to something I have felt.
Ty for the reflection! Understand the broader challenges and anxiety with these shifts, but always some timeless fine print that gets more obvious over time - fingers crossed
Looking forward to part 2. It seems to me that most professional relationships are driven by a search for status and validation. (Every update on LinkedIn.) But at their best, they spark a kind of generative creativity that enables us to do things together we couldn’t do alone (eg. Jobs and Ive). Now that more people are creatively collaborating with chatbots, will most “relational labor” be a form of status games?
Great thoughts and questions — agree that status and validation always play a part, I never expect that to go away regardless of the technological wave. But how you get status and validation can change, as you mention — the status levels of different roles tend to shift by the times. Creativity always ideal but harder to measure and price except in extremes. On to part 2…
I think if status and validation are not given their place, we might be stuck with complacency or being in a comfort zone.
I don't exactly remember which film: protoganist in a scene from 36 chambers of Shaolin or may be next in series films: you people are practicing martial ends inside this protective enclave with no visible threats. Are you people doing it for posterity? There powerless and helpless people in the village are being beaten by goons and thugs and if those helpless people are being trained with martial arts as essential life skills they can at least defend themselves. And so protoganist would step into that space and improves their life status.
When Gun and Gun Powder came, being inside that silos were of no help to protect the chambers no matter how much sophisticated one is in the martial arts practice.
Will the work context follow, or are the work and personal contexts just fundamentally different? An argument for why they might be different: the relationship labor and companionship hold value only as byproducts of the "real work". You fill the cup by being in the trenches with your cofounders/colleagues for many years, rather than explicitly hiring for companionship.
Or maybe this will be path-dependent on how AI agents take shape. A solo founder commanding an army of thousands anonymous agents that they spin up and down like AWS instances will not have their cup full at the end of the day. But maybe the story plays out different with a small team of persistent super-agents, with names, personalities, and even embodiment?
I’m not arguing that we won’t get value from machines playing people roles (we obviously will, as the market for all these chat products already points out), but rather that one of the near-irreplaceable roles of humans will be the building of real relationships in context. Comparative advantage in a sense. (Also haven’t seen evidence that machines can close the gap fully yet (more thoughts in this)).
Agree the relational work is bundled with real manual and cognitive work in most cases — otherwise it’s too much like ‘hire a teenager to hang out with your grandparents’ which is not quite natural though helpful in absence of other options.
I think this is true in both work and personal contexts, just a matter of different costs and different potential upsides ( greater range / economic value to be measured in scalable professional contexts) …
This is something I realized in 2020 and periodically forget and then have to re-learn: What you build accounts for 50% of the pleasure. Who you build it with accounts for the other 50%.
It is not clear whether who you build it with accounts for co-founder or team ship angle or you meant early Adoptees or user personas or target customers or segment whom we identify with certain shared pain points and who contribute to the inputs in the development of the product to be useful for the end user after we launch? Without their inputs as part of Design Thinking, product will end up as no one's product. So I am wondering whether the balance 50% is for co-founder or team-ship or for those initial customers experience who shaped the product's relevance in the marketplace by way of storytelling? If early Adoptees are to be included and feedback are collected by the AI agents or chatbots - doesn't that change the equity allocation?
Really entertaining read. I believe the thesis in this essay.
"But as intelligence gets cheaper, presence gets more expensive. Real, earned, interpersonal trust will become the rarest currency." Already feeling this. I think that's why I need to get coffee with someone each week.
I'm reading this like a love letter, from one human heart to another. It's nourishing. Thank you for articulating this so eloquently. 😊
And I guess I'm just on a roll with confirmation bias the last couple of weeks 😂 seeing this as a confirmation I've been on the right track since I left the Finance & IT industries eons ago.
It's still people with a human heart working in these industries, though.
Maybe it's Enlightenment, Realism, & Romanticism 3.0 in the making? And Substack is catalyzing this societal change? 🤔♥️
This is so true of work but also life more broadly.
As Trivikram wrote in Nuvvu Naaku Nachaav “Manam gelichinappudu chappatlu kotte vallu, manam odipoyinappu bujam tatte vallu naluguru lenappudu, entha sampadhinchinaa pogottukunna emi teda ledhu”
"We’ve automated the hands. We’re automating the heads. What’s left is the heart"
That insight in the last part was deep and profound. It clarified my muddled thoughts around this topic in an instant. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Very well done piece. Reads like Mogan Housel. I find as I age collaboration becomes more important and not in a pm and meetings sense but in a human connection sense. When you think your on the cusp of an idea and someone else blows your idea out of the water and you pivot and feed into theirs until the next brainwave comes along. Its the best part of the build. The riff. Iv tried a few ai's and yeah they can riff ideas but not the way a human does . Not the out of the box, how does that even work, it shouldnt but it totalky makes sense stuff. Its strange too when you look at it its remove, replace, avoid and aggregate on risk. Everyones a health and safety manager in their field but its the cowboy fixes and stuff that doesnt jump out as a first rate idea that creates the most pull and fun.
Somehow more and more often do I notice that technology is actually making my life harder & I crave just being able to speak to a human. I scroll through 100s of Google Maps reviews, and still don't know which salon I want to go to; I can see hundreds of flats for rent, taking hours to find something I like; & don't get me started on admin tasks such as fixing my internet or phone subscription. Asking a neighbor for a recommendation, just visiting an agency to arrange some viewings or calling a real human to sort my subscription seems the dream :D
Thank you for this wonderful piece. As a leader of a team feeling an urgency to figure out how we evolve in this new age, so we can have a voice in shaping that - rather than having it imposed on us - this gives me hope. It puts words to something I have felt.
Ty for the reflection! Understand the broader challenges and anxiety with these shifts, but always some timeless fine print that gets more obvious over time - fingers crossed
I love how well thought out this is. My newsfeed on X/Linkedin is nothing but leveraging AI articles/tools. Reading this makes perfect sense.
I should check out LinkedIn more just to be current on the state of AI slop affairs …
Looking forward to part 2. It seems to me that most professional relationships are driven by a search for status and validation. (Every update on LinkedIn.) But at their best, they spark a kind of generative creativity that enables us to do things together we couldn’t do alone (eg. Jobs and Ive). Now that more people are creatively collaborating with chatbots, will most “relational labor” be a form of status games?
Great thoughts and questions — agree that status and validation always play a part, I never expect that to go away regardless of the technological wave. But how you get status and validation can change, as you mention — the status levels of different roles tend to shift by the times. Creativity always ideal but harder to measure and price except in extremes. On to part 2…
I think if status and validation are not given their place, we might be stuck with complacency or being in a comfort zone.
I don't exactly remember which film: protoganist in a scene from 36 chambers of Shaolin or may be next in series films: you people are practicing martial ends inside this protective enclave with no visible threats. Are you people doing it for posterity? There powerless and helpless people in the village are being beaten by goons and thugs and if those helpless people are being trained with martial arts as essential life skills they can at least defend themselves. And so protoganist would step into that space and improves their life status.
When Gun and Gun Powder came, being inside that silos were of no help to protect the chambers no matter how much sophisticated one is in the martial arts practice.
Good essay!
What do you make of the idea that - outside the work context - relational labor *does* seem to be getting offloaded to e.g. ChatGPT, Character.ai, and new apps like Tolan? https://www.tolans.com/relay/introducing-tolan
Will the work context follow, or are the work and personal contexts just fundamentally different? An argument for why they might be different: the relationship labor and companionship hold value only as byproducts of the "real work". You fill the cup by being in the trenches with your cofounders/colleagues for many years, rather than explicitly hiring for companionship.
Or maybe this will be path-dependent on how AI agents take shape. A solo founder commanding an army of thousands anonymous agents that they spin up and down like AWS instances will not have their cup full at the end of the day. But maybe the story plays out different with a small team of persistent super-agents, with names, personalities, and even embodiment?
I’m not arguing that we won’t get value from machines playing people roles (we obviously will, as the market for all these chat products already points out), but rather that one of the near-irreplaceable roles of humans will be the building of real relationships in context. Comparative advantage in a sense. (Also haven’t seen evidence that machines can close the gap fully yet (more thoughts in this)).
Agree the relational work is bundled with real manual and cognitive work in most cases — otherwise it’s too much like ‘hire a teenager to hang out with your grandparents’ which is not quite natural though helpful in absence of other options.
I think this is true in both work and personal contexts, just a matter of different costs and different potential upsides ( greater range / economic value to be measured in scalable professional contexts) …
This is something I realized in 2020 and periodically forget and then have to re-learn: What you build accounts for 50% of the pleasure. Who you build it with accounts for the other 50%.
So very true, and I do think the pandemic isolation period and remote work was a period of reckoning for this re-realization
It is not clear whether who you build it with accounts for co-founder or team ship angle or you meant early Adoptees or user personas or target customers or segment whom we identify with certain shared pain points and who contribute to the inputs in the development of the product to be useful for the end user after we launch? Without their inputs as part of Design Thinking, product will end up as no one's product. So I am wondering whether the balance 50% is for co-founder or team-ship or for those initial customers experience who shaped the product's relevance in the marketplace by way of storytelling? If early Adoptees are to be included and feedback are collected by the AI agents or chatbots - doesn't that change the equity allocation?
Really entertaining read. I believe the thesis in this essay.
"But as intelligence gets cheaper, presence gets more expensive. Real, earned, interpersonal trust will become the rarest currency." Already feeling this. I think that's why I need to get coffee with someone each week.
Coffee / cafe culture is so much about ritual connection
Sheer eloquence. loved the piece.
Ty for reading! 🤝
Really appreciate you for publishing this piece. It beautifully articulates thoughts and feelings I’ve long held but struggled to express clearly.
💛
I'm reading this like a love letter, from one human heart to another. It's nourishing. Thank you for articulating this so eloquently. 😊
And I guess I'm just on a roll with confirmation bias the last couple of weeks 😂 seeing this as a confirmation I've been on the right track since I left the Finance & IT industries eons ago.
It's still people with a human heart working in these industries, though.
Maybe it's Enlightenment, Realism, & Romanticism 3.0 in the making? And Substack is catalyzing this societal change? 🤔♥️
Thanks for reading! Some of all of the above, but were pushed to the brink to understand its value from first principles again if we can
Beautifully intuited and related. Your work is a study in insightful elegance!
Ty!
This is so true of work but also life more broadly.
As Trivikram wrote in Nuvvu Naaku Nachaav “Manam gelichinappudu chappatlu kotte vallu, manam odipoyinappu bujam tatte vallu naluguru lenappudu, entha sampadhinchinaa pogottukunna emi teda ledhu”
True. Took me a minute to parse that out but yes - and four is a great number.
"We’ve automated the hands. We’re automating the heads. What’s left is the heart"
That insight in the last part was deep and profound. It clarified my muddled thoughts around this topic in an instant. Thank you for sharing this with us.
🤝🙏
Admirable thinking and writing
🙏
Brilliant.
Very well done piece. Reads like Mogan Housel. I find as I age collaboration becomes more important and not in a pm and meetings sense but in a human connection sense. When you think your on the cusp of an idea and someone else blows your idea out of the water and you pivot and feed into theirs until the next brainwave comes along. Its the best part of the build. The riff. Iv tried a few ai's and yeah they can riff ideas but not the way a human does . Not the out of the box, how does that even work, it shouldnt but it totalky makes sense stuff. Its strange too when you look at it its remove, replace, avoid and aggregate on risk. Everyones a health and safety manager in their field but its the cowboy fixes and stuff that doesnt jump out as a first rate idea that creates the most pull and fun.
Maybe thats what it is . Fun.
Heres to those who dare to dream.
Somehow more and more often do I notice that technology is actually making my life harder & I crave just being able to speak to a human. I scroll through 100s of Google Maps reviews, and still don't know which salon I want to go to; I can see hundreds of flats for rent, taking hours to find something I like; & don't get me started on admin tasks such as fixing my internet or phone subscription. Asking a neighbor for a recommendation, just visiting an agency to arrange some viewings or calling a real human to sort my subscription seems the dream :D