After Automation

Automation using AI tools covers coding, writing, design, customer service, and model testing. Human work remains necessary even as AI handles most tasks, with a team that continues hiring and does not replace employees with agents. Work changes rather than disappears: code is no longer written by hand, communication may involve humans or agents, and managers and engineers take on more direct technical and customer-facing roles. AI responds to most work emails, enabling inbox zero, but humans still review messages. Concerns about job loss persist, with warnings about entry-level white-collar roles and layoffs paired with monitoring software to improve training data for advanced knowledge work.

"At Every, we've automated everything we can. We use Codex and Claude Code across coding, writing, design, customer service, and more. We alpha-test all of the new models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google before they come out. We are riding the exponential boom in model intelligence and automation as far and as fast as possible. And yet it seems like, for us, there's more human work to do than ever. We are a team of almost 30 people, and we haven't fired all of our employees in favor of agents. We haven't ditched software-as-a-service (SaaS) products in favor of vibe coded apps. We still hire humans to do customer service (with a lot of agent assistance), and we still hire human writers and editors and engineers."

"Our work does look completely different than it used to, though. We don't write code by hand anymore. If you @-mention someone in our Slack, it's a toss-up whether you're talking to a human or an agent. Managers are committing code like ICs and engineers are talking directly to customers. For the last several weeks, AI has responded to 95 percent of my work emails. I am almost always at inbox zero (an extremely rare state for me), but I still review my email."

"In short, the future looks weird, but also familiar. The familiarity is surprising because the one thing CEOs, knowledge workers, and investors seem to agree on is that AI is a threat to jobs, the economy, safety, and human meaning. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns that AI could wipe out up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Meta just laid off 8,000 people, and is installing software on U.S. employees' computers to capture mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes for a higher quality source of AI training data on advanced knowledge work."

Read at Every