Why do these businesses care so much? I suspect they aren’t really worried about AI—they're clinging to an old belief that if work isn't visibly difficult to produce, it must be less valuable. When we dig beneath the surface of "no-AI" policies and detection tools, we find an age-old assumption that worth must be measured in struggle. This mindset... See more

AI forces us to confront our dysfunctional relationship with work. It holds up a mirror to our culture’s deeply rooted belief that struggle equals value—and in that reflection lies a rare opportunity: to reimagine work in terms of outcomes, not optics; human flourishing, not performance theater.

The rise of AI is forcing us to confront our complicated relationship with effort and worth. But this reckoning was long overdue. Our attachment to suffering as a proxy for value has been undermining our work, well-being, and creativity for centuries.

AI can act as a force multiplier for human creativity, handling the mechanical aspects of work that have historically consumed our time and energy. When AI handles the drudgery, we're free to focus on the meaningful parts of work that deserve our attention.

Knowledge work rarely follows linear patterns. Our most valuable contributions often come from reflection, seemingly "unproductive" conversations, exploration of dead ends, and invisible mental processing.

Reflection, curation, context-setting, deciding what not to do—these are some of the most valuable forms of labor in an AI-assisted world. But they’re often invisible because they don’t “look” like work.

AI offers us a chance to fundamentally rethink why we work and how we measure its value.

Knowledge work rarely follows linear patterns. Our most valuable contributions often come from reflection, seemingly "unproductive" conversations, exploration of dead ends, and invisible mental processing.

This narrow view of productivity—favoring what can be seen, tracked, or timed—helps explain our conflicted relationship with AI. Yes, impact matters, and it would be overly simplistic to claim organizations don’t reward outcomes. But in many contexts, especially where results are hard to measure, visible effort still carries disproportionate... See more