Last week, my EA Jem shared an email in our Inventium WhatsApp group. The sender wanted to know: “Are you actually a real person?” Jem, to her credit, didn’t reply with “beep beep.” (She’s clearly a more evolved person than I am). It’s not the first time she has been asked this question. And while it’s mildly annoying, it’s also (perhaps) understandable given part of our business does AI training. We’ve spent the last two years telling people bots can do this stuff. Jem uses AI a lot in her...

Most people I talk to use AI most days. They prompt, they play, they’re pretty good at it. You can probably write an email in 60 seconds that used to take you 20 minutes. Congratulations: you’ve saved enough time over a year to watch the entire Lord of the Rings extended trilogy. Twice*. But most people stop there. They’ve got AI doing ad hoc tasks faster, and they think that’s it. Meanwhile, the boring, repetitive stuff is still being done by hand. Same task, same week, same person, forever....

Congratulations. You’ve been promoted. You’re now middle management. The team you’re managing? Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, whatever AI tool your company has rolled out, and possibly two more depending on the day. They’re brilliant. They’re tireless. They will not stop pinging you for feedback, review, correction, and the occasional reprompt. Welcome to your unpaid promotion. Last week on How I Work I sat down with Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, a behavioural scientist at BCG whose recent HBR study...