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The Illusion of AI Replacement

Why the job narrative misses the point.

The conversation about AI replacing jobs is fundamentally flawed. Not because the technology isn’t powerful enough — it is. But because it frames the wrong question.

The real question isn’t will AI replace me? It’s how does intelligence reorganise around me?

When we introduced spreadsheets, we didn’t eliminate accountants. We eliminated manual calculation and created financial analysts. The same pattern is emerging with AI, but at a scale and speed that makes the transition feel existential.

The Reorganisation Thesis

Every major technological shift has reorganised human work, not eliminated it. The printing press didn’t eliminate scribes — it created publishers. The internet didn’t eliminate retailers — it created e-commerce specialists. AI won’t eliminate knowledge workers — it will create cognitive architects.

The organisations that understand this will build systems where human judgment and machine intelligence amplify each other. The ones that don’t will spend years automating the wrong things.