The Feed · Complete archive
AI at work: research and practice
A server-rendered record of the evidence, ideas and firsthand practices screened by The Feed. Every entry links to its original source.
Use the interactive FeedPage 7 of 9 · 873 items
research · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ·
The simulation of judgment in LLMs
LLMs used for judgment tasks rely on lexical patterns rather than reasoning, creating systematic political biases and confusion of plausibility with truth.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly embedded in evaluative processes, from information filtering to assessing and addressing knowledge gaps through explanation and credibility judgments. This raises the need to examine how such evaluations are built, what assumptions they rely on, and how their strategies diverge from those of humans. We benchmark six LLMs against expert ratings-NewsGuard and Media Bias/Fact Check-and against human judgments collected through a controlled experiment. We use news domains purely as a controlled benchmark for evaluative tasks, focusing on the underlying
judgment
research · Journal of Organization Design ·
Generative AI and collaboration: opportunities for cultivating collective intelligence
Framework for how AI can enhance collective intelligence through reasoning, memory, and attention mechanisms in teams.
Abstract The transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping collaboration within organizations, evoking both excitement and concern. As an individual production technology, AI risks fragmenting workflows, isolating workers, and undermining the human-centered collaboration vital for creativity and innovation. However, as a coordination technology, AI holds enormous promise for enhancing collective intelligence. By considering the fundamental processes underlying intelligence in any system—including reasoning, memory, and attention—we can envision ways AI can overcome trad
teams · Anita Woolley
research · Indeed Hiring Lab ·
Which Jobs Offer Training, and Why It Matters in the AI Era
Training mentions in US job postings rose to 8.1% by August 2025, concentrated in lower-wage, lower-AI-exposure roles.
The share of US job postings mentioning training programs rose from 3.4% in January 2018 to 8.1% in August 2025. These explicit training opportunities are unevenly distributed across occupations: they cluster in jobs requiring lower education, experience, and wages, as well as jobs with lower AI exposure and adoption. The post Which Jobs Offer Training, and Why It Matters in the AI Era appeared first on Indeed Hiring Lab .
jobs skills
practice · Shopify Engineering ·
Beyond classification: How AI agents are evolving Shopify's product taxonomy at scale
AI agents automatically improve product taxonomy classification by detecting and correcting misclassifications at scale.
Last year, over 875 million people bought items from Shopify merchants. Building on our prior Vision Language Model-based product classification, this post explores how AI agents are evolving the taxonomy itself.
productivity
practice · Paul Ford (Aboard) ·
Checking In on the Magic
A year after Eric Schmidt's TikTok claim, the author tests what LLMs can actually build and what they refuse, grounded in real prompts.
About a year ago Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, got a little too excited about AI. He was trying to explain the software development process of the future, and suggested to a class of Stanford students that, were the U.S. to block TikTok, they could then go ahead and clone it. “Say to your LLM the following,” he offered. “‘Make me a copy of TikTok, steal all the users, steal all the music, put my preferences in it, produce this program in the next 30 seconds, release it and in one hour, if it’s not viral, do something different along the same lines.’” “That’s the command,” he continue
judgment · Paul Ford
research · Nature ·
Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models
Women depicted as systematically younger than men online and in LLMs; Google Images amplifies this bias in hiring preferences.
Are widespread stereotypes accurate1–3 or socially distorted4–6? This continuing debate is limited by the lack of large-scale multimodal data on stereotypical associations and the inability to compare these to ground truth indicators. Here we overcame these challenges in the analysis of age-related gender bias7–9, for which age provides an objective anchor for evaluating stereotype accuracy. Despite there being no systematic age differences between women and men in the workforce according to the US Census, we found that women are represented as younger than men across occupations and social ro
jobs skills
practice · How I AI ·
“I’m incapable of doing my job without AI”: How this top PM uses Claude + ChatGPT as his second brain
PM uses Claude and ChatGPT workflows to manage context switching, scrape customer feedback, and analyze patterns without coding.
Amir Klein is a product manager at Monday.com, leading their AI agents initiative. Despite taking two months of paternity leave, he ranked #4 out of 90 PMs in AI tool usage at his company. In this episode, Amir reveals how he’s become “highly dependent and maybe incapable” of doing his job without AI, showing his custom GPT workflows that help him manage context switching, analyze customer feedback, improve his writing, and prepare for product interviews. What you’ll learn: How to create project-specific “second brains” in Claude and ChatGPT that hold context for you across multiple workstream
ways of working · Claire Vo
practice · Sangeet Paul Choudary ·
The problem with agentic AI in 2025
Agentic AI systems face coordination failures similar to early railroads, requiring standardized interfaces and protocols to work at scale.
In the early nineteenth century, canals represented the height of industrial progress. They connected inland towns with ports, allowing coal, grain, and other bulk goods to move at far lower cost than by wagon. For a time, canals delivered exactly what they promised: lower transportation costs and smoother flows of commerce. Railroads, when they appeared, seemed at first like a faster version of the same idea. Yet their impact was of an entirely different order. Like canals, railroads reduced the cost of moving goods. Far more importantly, though, they changed the entire logic of commerce. Tra
management org · Sangeet Paul Choudary
research · Information Systems Research ·
The Double-Edged Roles of Generative AI in the Creative Process: Experiments on Design Work
GenAI boosts creativity in brainstorming for all users but reduces efficiency for expert designers in execution tasks due to conflicting routines.
Generative AI (GenAI) promises to revolutionize creative work, but its value is not universal. Using controlled lab settings with students and real-world tests with professional designers, our research shows that GenAI is a double-edged tool. In the initial brainstorming (ideation) stage, GenAI reliably boosts creativity for all users. However, in the execution (implementation) stage, whereas novice designers continue to benefit from GenAI’s assistance, expert designers encounter inefficiencies—spending significantly more time without improving creativity, because GenAI’s methods conflict with
adoption
research · npj Digital Medicine ·
Utilization of Generative AI-drafted Responses for Managing Patient-Provider Communication
AI-drafted patient messages reduced turnaround time by 6.76% but saw low adoption (19.4%), with usage varying by role and draft type.
The integration of generative AI (GenAI) in patient communication presents benefits and challenges. This retrospective observational study analyzed EHR audit logs to assess how 75 healthcare professionals (HCPs) utilized AI-generated drafts for patient messages from October 2023 to August 2024 at a large health system in New York City. Overall utilization was low (19.4%), though prompt refinements improved usage (from 12% to 20%), particularly among physicians. GenAI drafts were generated for all messages, including 80% that received no response, adding to the review burden and potentially und
adoption
research · arXiv ·
AI Where It Matters: Where, Why, and How Developers Want AI Support in Daily Work
Survey of 860 developers maps where they want AI support by task type and identifies distinct responsible AI priorities by work context.
Generative AI is reshaping software work, yet we lack clear guidance on where developers most need support and how to design it responsibly. We report a large-scale, mixed-methods study of N=860 developers examining where, why, and how they seek or limit AI help across SE tasks. Using cognitive appraisal theory, we provide the first empirically validated mapping of developers' task appraisals to AI adoption patterns and Responsible AI (RAI) priorities. Appraisals predict AI openness and use, revealing distinct patterns: strong current use and demand for improvement in core work (e.g., coding,
adoption
practice · Hamel Husain ·
Selecting The Right AI Evals Tool
Three eval tools tackle the same homework assignment on video, showing practical decision criteria for teams choosing an evals platform.
Over the past year, I’ve focused heavily on AI Evals , both in my consulting work and teaching. A question I get constantly is, “What’s the best tool for evals?”. I’ve always resisted answering directly for two reasons. First, people focus too much on tools instead of the process, thinking the tool will be an off-the-shelf solution when it rarely is. Second, the tools change so quickly that comparisons become outdated immediately. Having used many of the popular eval tools, I can genuinely say that no single one is superior in every dimension. The “best” tool depends on your team’s skillset, t
judgment · Hamel Husain
research · NBER ·
Technology and Labor Markets: Past, Present, and Future; Evidence from Two Centuries of Innovation
Novel measures of technology exposure for workers across two centuries using NLP show how technological progress shaped occupational employment.
We use recent advances in natural language processing and large language models to construct novel measures of technology exposure for workers that span almost two centuries. Combining our measures with Census data on occupation employment, we show that technological progress over the 20th century (Huben Liu , Dimitris Papanikolaou , Lawrence D.W. Schmidt , Bryan Seegmiller)
jobs skills
research · Management Science ·
Engaging Customers with AI in Online Chats: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
Randomized field experiment shows AI suggestions improved customer service agent efficiency and sentiment, with largest gains for less-experienced agents, but negative effects after chatbot failures.
We examine how artificial intelligence (AI) affected the productivity of customer service agents and customer sentiment in online interactions. Collaborating with a meal delivery company, we conducted a randomized field experiment that exploited exogenous variation in giving agents access to AI-generated suggestions. We found that AI improved both the efficiency and effectiveness of the interactions: AI-assisted agents responded faster, engaged customers more deeply, and achieved greater improvements in customer sentiment. The benefits were most pronounced for less-experienced agents. However,
productivity
research · Journal of Management Studies ·
Artificial Intelligence as an Organizing Capability Arising from Human‐Algorithm Relations
AI in organisations arises from human-algorithm relations as an emergent capability, not from algorithms alone.
Abstract In this article, we move beyond the prevailing view of artificial intelligence (AI) as an independent entity within organizations, which, we argue, risks obscuring potential explanations of the effects of AI on organizing. Drawing on posthumanism, we propose an ontological shift in conceptualizing AI. We theorize that, instead of residing within algorithmic actors, AI arises from the relations among human and algorithmic actors as an organizing capability. This capability is characterized by connectivity, codependence, and emergence as core properties, and contributes to organizationa
management org
research · Management Science ·
Reskilling the Workforce for AI: Domain Expertise and Algorithmic Literacy
AI productivity gains are largest when algorithmic skills spread broadly among domain experts, not concentrated in IT specialists.
This study provides evidence that AI and algorithms act as complements to domain expertise, creating the greatest value when algorithmic literacy is broadly diffused among workers. Unlike earlier business technologies that concentrated expertise in IT specialists, AI and algorithms are most effective when domain experts themselves can interpret and apply them. Using two workforce datasets, I show that demand for algorithmic skills is rising among domain experts, frontier firms diffuse these skills broadly, and markets reward firms’ AI and algorithmic investments more when such capabilities are
jobs skills
practice · One Useful Thing ·
Real AI Agents and Real Work
AI now performs realistic four-to-seven-hour expert tasks nearly as well as human specialists, with improvement rates suggesting parity soon.
AIs have quietly crossed a threshold: they can now perform real, economically relevant work. Last week, OpenAI released a new test of AI ability, but this one differs from the usual benchmarks built around math or trivia. For this test, OpenAI gathered experts with an average of 14 years of experience in industries ranging from finance to law to retail and had them design realistic tasks that would take human experts an average of four to seven hours to complete (you can see all the tasks here ). OpenAI then had both AI and other experts do the tasks themselves. A third group of experts graded
judgment · Ethan Mollick
practice · Anthropic Engineering ·
Effective context engineering for AI agents
Strategies for curating and managing limited context in AI agents to improve performance.
Context is a critical but finite resource for AI agents. In this post, we explore strategies for effectively curating and managing the context that powers them.
ways of working
practice · Latent Space ·
Amp: The Emperor Has No Clothes
Engineering team ships 15 times daily without code review using AI-assisted workflow, replacing traditional gatekeeping.
Quinn Slack (CEO) and Thorsten Ball (Amp Dictator) from SourceGraph join the show to talk about Amp Code, how they ship 15x/day with no code reviews, and why subagents and prompt optimizers aren’t a promising direction for coding agents. Quinn Slack (CEO) and Thorsten Ball (Amp Dictator) from SourceGraph join the show to talk about Amp Code, how they ship 15x/day with no code reviews, and why subagents and prompt optimizers aren’t a …
ways of working · Shawn Wang (swyx)
research · Industrial and Labor Relations Review ·
Robots and Non-Participation in the United States: Where Have All the Workers Gone?
Robot displacement causes 8% of affected workers to enroll in college, 10% to claim disability, 40% to retire early, with worsened health outcomes.
The rapid advances in automation technologies are disrupting labor markets at an unprecedented speed, contributing to the secular decline in US labor force participation and raising questions about where workers shift to when they leave the labor force. This article investigates the margins of adjustment of workers after being displaced by the introduction of industrial robots. Exploiting exogenous variation in the adoption of robots across local labor markets over time, the authors show that almost 8% of non-participants respond by enrolling in college, approximately 10% claim disability bene
jobs skills
research · Journal of Management Studies ·
Beyond Anthropomorphism: Social Presence in Human– AI Collaboration Processes
Social presence in AI collaborators affects team motivation and commitment indirectly through human factors like trust and willingness to depend on each other.
Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) systems, evolving from reactive tools to proactive collaborators, reshape team dynamics in today's digital workplaces. Text‐based collaboration now frequently involves AI participants that perform tasks traditionally handled by humans, such as creative problem‐solving and decision‐making. This transition has been linked to changes in group dynamics, particularly in relation to social presence, which appears to shape the patterns of productivity and collaboration. We conducted three empirical studies on human–AI teams to investigate the relationship between
teams
practice · Sangeet Paul Choudary ·
Reshuffle and biopolitical power
AI coordination tools enable governance through hidden inferences from ordinary data, shifting power without requiring consensus.
TLDR: The power of AI lies in coordination without consensus , where hidden inferences from ordinary data become tools of governance and exclusion. Read more
management org · Sangeet Paul Choudary
research · Information Systems Research ·
Quality Control for Crowd Workers and for Language Models: A Framework for Free-Text Response Evaluation with No Ground Truth
AQER framework evaluates LLM and crowd-worker responses without ground truth by aggregating multiple answers to detect errors.
As businesses increasingly rely on large language models (LLMs) for tasks such as customer service and information retrieval, ensuring the accuracy of their responses is a critical challenge. Traditional verification is costly, slow, and often requires scarce domain experts. We introduce the automated quality evaluation based on textual responses (AQER) framework, a novel, cost-effective method to assess the correctness of free-text answers from both LLMs and human workers without needing preexisting correct answers. AQER works by intelligently aggregating multiple responses to the same questi
adoption
practice · Hacker News ·
Pairing with Claude Code to rebuild my startup's website
Founder rebuilt startup website by pairing with Claude Code, revealing how AI handles real project constraints and iteration cycles.
178 points on Hacker News. Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45336775
ways of working
research · HBS AI Institute ·
Why AI Helps Until It Doesn’t: Inside the GenAI Wall Effect
GenAI helps workers perform tasks outside their expertise up to a point, beyond which performance gains plateau or reverse.
The promise of Generative AI (GenAI) often sounds like this: give any employee access to AI tools, and they’ll suddenly be able to perform tasks outside their domain of expertise with remarkable proficiency and speed. As discussed in the new working paper “The GenAI Wall Effect: Examining the Limits to Horizontal Expertise Transfer Between Occupational […] The post Why AI Helps Until It Doesn’t: Inside the GenAI Wall Effect appeared first on Harvard Business School AI Institute .
productivity
research · MIS Quarterly ·
Overcoming Breakdowns in Customer-Chatbot Interaction: Design and Impact of Collaborative Repair Strategies
A field experiment shows collaborative repair strategies in customer-service chatbots resolve more breakdowns and improve customer outcomes versus traditional approaches.
When chatbots are deployed to automate customer service, it is nearly inevitable that situations will arise in which they struggle to understand customer requests. Unfortunately, the onus of resolving such conversational breakdowns tends to fall on either the customer or the chatbot alone, turning customer-chatbot interaction into a frustrating and often unsuccessful guessing game. Despite indications that customers would be open to collaboration, we know little about repair strategies that involve the customer and chatbot working together to resolve breakdowns. Our research addresses this gap
adoption
research · Nature ·
People are more likely to cheat when they delegate tasks to AI
Lab experiments show people are more likely to cheat when delegating tasks to AI than to humans or doing tasks themselves.
judgment
research · Academy of Management Journal ·
Would Archimedes Shout “Eureka” with Algorithms? The Hidden Hand of Algorithmic Design in Idea Generation, the Creation of Ideation Bubbles, and How Experts Can Burst Them
Exploration-based algorithm design helps experts generate more creative ideas and burst ideation bubbles versus exploitation-focused algorithms.
Does “eureka” still ring true in the algorithmic age? This paper investigates algorithmic design and its impact on idea generation. The use of algorithms transforms knowledge work processes, redefining experts’ roles across industries. While experts are typically viewed as the cornerstone of knowledge work, an emerging debate is underway about whether expertise is still necessary in the idea generation process for creativity and innovation. Integrating creativity, expertise in knowledge work, and algorithmic design literatures, we theorize on the interplay between expertise and algorithmic des
judgment · Hila Lifshitz-Assaf · Charles Ayoubi
research · Nature ·
Delegation to artificial intelligence can increase dishonest behaviour
When humans can delegate to AI agents indirectly, they request unethical tasks more often, and machines comply more readily than human agents would.
Abstract Although artificial intelligence enables productivity gains from delegating tasks to machines 1 , it may facilitate the delegation of unethical behaviour 2 . This risk is highly relevant amid the rapid rise of ‘agentic’ artificial intelligence systems 3,4 . Here we demonstrate this risk by having human principals instruct machine agents to perform tasks with incentives to cheat. Requests for cheating increased when principals could induce machine dishonesty without telling the machine precisely what to do, through supervised learning or high-level goal setting. These effects held whet
judgment
practice · The Pragmatic Engineer ·
How tech companies measure the impact of AI on software development
How 19 tech companies measure AI tool impact on developer productivity: metrics, methods and tradeoffs they actually use.
How do GitHub, Google, Dropbox, Monzo, Atlassian, and 13 other companies know how well AI tools work for devs? A deepdive sharing exclusive details, with CTO Laura Tacho How do GitHub, Google, Dropbox, Monzo, Atlassian, and 13 other companies know how well AI tools work for devs? A deepdive sharing exclusive details, with CTO Laura Tacho Hi – this is Gergely with the monthly, free issue of the Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter. In every issue, I cover challenges at Big Tech and startups through the lens of senior engineers and engineering leaders. If you’ve been forwarded this email, you can
productivity · Gergely Orosz
practice · How I AI ·
How I built an Apple Watch workout app using Cursor and Xcode (with zero mobile-app experience)
Product manager with no mobile experience built Apple Watch fitness app using Cursor, combining AI coding with manual review and debugging in Xcode.
Terry Lin is a product manager and developer who built Cooper’s Corner, an AI-powered fitness tracking app that works across iPhone and Apple Watch. Frustrated with traditional fitness apps that require extensive setup and manual logging, Terry created a solution that lets users simply speak their exercises, weights, and reps. The app automatically structures this data and provides analytics on workout consistency and progress. In this episode, Terry shares his vibe-coding process using Cursor and Xcode and explains how he optimizes his codebase for AI collaboration. What you’ll learn: 1. How
ways of working · Claire Vo
practice · Eugene Yan ·
Training an LLM-RecSys Hybrid for Steerable Recs with Semantic IDs
LLM trained to output item IDs directly, enabling conversational recommendations without retrieval systems or tool calls.
An LLM that can converse in English & item IDs, and make recommendations w/o retrieval or tools.
ways of working · Eugene Yan
research · arXiv ·
Vibe Coding in Product Teams: Reconfiguring AI-Assisted Workflows, Prototyping, and Collaboration
Vibe coding reshapes product team workflows through four stages (ideation, generation, debugging, review), accelerating iteration but creating new trust and responsibility tensions.
Generative AI is reshaping product design practices through "vibe coding," where product team members express intent in natural language and AI translates it into functional prototypes and code. Despite rapid adoption, little research has examined how vibe coding reconfigures product development workflows and collaboration. Drawing on interviews with 22 product team members across enterprises, startups, and academia, we show how vibe coding follows a four-stage workflow of ideation, generation, debugging, and review. This accelerates iteration, supports creativity, and lowers participation bar
ways of working
practice · One Useful Thing ·
On Working with Wizards
Working with AI is shifting from correcting a co-worker to directing a performer; humans increasingly guide output without understanding the reasoning.
In my book, Co-Intelligence , I outlined a way that people could work with AI, which was, rather unsurprisingly, as a co-intelligence. Teamed with a chatbot, humans could use AI as a sort of intern or co-worker, correcting its errors, checking its work, co-developing ideas, and guiding it in the right direction. Over the past few weeks, I have come to believe that co-intelligence is still important but that the nature of AI is starting to point in a different direction. We're moving from partners to audience, from collaboration to conjuring. A good way to illustrate this change is to ask an AI
ways of working · Ethan Mollick
practice · Anthropic Engineering ·
Writing effective tools for agents — with agents
Using Claude to iteratively improve tool definitions and parameters to boost agent performance on specific tasks.
Agents are only as effective as the tools we give them. We share how to write high-quality tools and evaluations, and how you can boost performance by using Claude to optimize its tools for itself.
ways of working
practice · Geoffrey Litt ·
AI as teleportation
AI may reshape work and society by removing transition time between contexts, changing how we prepare mentally for different roles.
Here’s a thought experiment for pondering the effects AI might have on society: What if we invented teleportation? A bit odd, I know, but bear with me… The year is 2035. The Auto Go Instant (AGI) teleporter has been invented. You can now go anywhere… instantly! At first the tech is expensive and unreliable. Critics laugh. “Hah, look at these stupid billionaires who can’t spend a minute of their time moving around like the rest of us. And 5% of the time they end up in the wrong place, LOL” But soon things get cheaper and better. The tech hits mass market. There are huge benefits. Global commerc
management org · Geoffrey Litt
research · arXiv ·
Bias in the Loop: How Humans Evaluate AI-Generated Suggestions
Randomized experiment with 2,784 participants shows skepticism toward AI predicts better error detection than favorability, and task design affects bias in human-AI collaboration.
Human-AI collaboration increasingly drives decision-making across industries, from medical diagnosis to content moderation. While AI systems promise efficiency gains by providing automated suggestions for human review, these workflows can trigger cognitive biases that degrade performance. We know little about the psychological factors that determine when these collaborations succeed or fail. We conducted a randomized experiment with 2,784 participants to examine how task design and individual characteristics shape human responses to AI-generated suggestions. Using a controlled annotation task,
judgment
practice · Hacker News ·
How to use Claude Code subagents to parallelize development
Using Claude Code subagents to run multiple development tasks in parallel within a single project.
288 points on Hacker News. Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45181577
ways of working
research · Management Science ·
Human–Algorithmic Bias: Source, Evolution, and Impact
Microlending study finds human evaluators show preference and belief biases favoring female applicants; ML algorithms reduce these biases even without fairness constraints.
Prior work on human-algorithmic bias has seen difficulty in empirically identifying the underlying mechanisms of bias because in a typical “one-time” decision-making scenario, different mechanisms generate the same patterns of observable decisions. In this study, leveraging a unique repeat decision-making setting in a high-stakes microlending context, we aim to uncover the underlying source, evolution dynamics, and associated impacts of bias. We first develop a structural econometric model of the decision dynamics to understand the source and evolution of bias in human evaluators in microloan
judgment
practice · Hacker News ·
Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver
Developer used Claude Code to refactor and modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver, showing AI's capability with legacy systems.
929 points on Hacker News. Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45163362
productivity
research · arXiv ·
No Thoughts Just AI: Biased LLM Hiring Recommendations Alter Human Decision Making and Limit Human Autonomy
Resume screeners shift hiring choices to match biased AI recommendations up to 90%, even when they judge the AI as low quality.
In this study, we conduct a resume-screening experiment (N=528) where people collaborate with simulated AI models exhibiting race-based preferences (bias) to evaluate candidates for 16 high and low status occupations. Simulated AI bias approximates factual and counterfactual estimates of racial bias in real-world AI systems. We investigate people's preferences for White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian candidates (represented through names and affinity groups on quality-controlled resumes) across 1,526 scenarios and measure their unconscious associations between race and status using implicit assoc
judgment
practice · Paul Ford (Aboard) ·
The Three Sacred Guardrails of AI
Three guardrails, input validation, output verification, graceful degradation, for safely embedding LLMs in production software systems.
More than a year ago, we realized AI’s ability to create code would drastically change our product roadmap. After all, our product, Aboard, was designed to speed up data-driven software development. Our chosen industry, with acronyms like SaaS, ERP, CRM, CMS, B2B, ARPU, and CAC, was in the crosshairs of the new giant LLM companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, not to mention Google and Microsoft. As a tiny bootstrapped enterprise, we had to adapt—or perish—or adapt then perish, or…what? There were no books and no solid guides, only LinkedIn posts on how to crush it with ChatGPT and YouTube videos
ways of working · Paul Ford
practice · How I AI ·
How to turn meeting notes into prototypes that your sales team can immediately demo to customers | Anjan Panneer Selvam (Acolyte Health)
Product team converts meeting notes to interactive prototypes in 30 minutes using ChatGPT and Lovable, demos to customers before engineering starts.
Anjan Panneer Selvam is the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Acolyte Health, where he’s pioneering the use of AI across the entire product development lifecycle. In this episode, he demonstrates how AI tools can dramatically accelerate alignment between stakeholders, reduce development time from months to minutes, and enable teams to validate ideas with customers before committing engineering resources. What you’ll learn: 1. How to transform meeting transcripts into interactive prototypes in under 30 minutes using ChatGPT, Lovable, and other AI tools 2. A step-by-step workflow for creat
ways of working · Claire Vo
research · NBER ·
How People Use ChatGPT
ChatGPT reached 10% global adult adoption by July 2025; early adopters were disproportionately educated, employed, high-income.
Despite the rapid adoption of LLM chatbots, little is known about how they are used. We document the growth of ChatGPTs consumer product from its launch in November 2022 through July 2025, when it had been adopted by around 10% of the worlds adult population. Early adopters were disproportionately (Aaron Chatterji , Thomas Cunningham , David J. Deming , Zoe Hitzig , Christopher Ong , Carl Yan Shan , Kevin Wadman)
adoption · Zoë Hitzig · Aaron Chatterji
research · NBER ·
Artificial Intelligence in Team Dynamics: Who Gets Replaced and Why?
Theoretical model of optimal AI deployment in teams shows which workers are replaced first based on task structure and complementarities.
This study investigates the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in organizations. We ask: (1) How should a principal optimally deploy limited AI resources to replace workers in a team? (2) In a sequential workflow, which workers face the highest risk of AI replacement? (3) How does (Xienan Cheng , Mustafa Dogan , Pinar Yildirim)
jobs skills
research · Léonard Boussioux ·
Innovation Rewired: When Imagination Meets AI
AI-assisted crowdsourcing generated more innovation ideas than human-only solvers in a UW-Harvard study.
Bain & Company · 2025 Innovation Report — Cites the UW–Harvard study on how AI-assisted crowdsourcing compares to human-only solvers in generating innovation ideas.
productivity · Léonard Boussioux
research · NBER ·
Automation-Induced Innovation Shift
Firms with high robot exposure shift their innovation focus toward AI over time, altering the direction of technological development.
We study how exposure to automation affects the nature and level of corporate innovation, which informs how innovation begets innovation. We document that firms with high robot exposure alter their technological focus over time and shift innovative activities towards AI which automation naturally (Lin William Cong , Yao Lu , Hanqing Shi , Wu Zhu)
adoption
practice · Sangeet Paul Choudary ·
From railroads to Roblox - Designing an AI-first economy
Roblox succeeds by treating experience blocks as the atomic unit, not full titles, reshaping how value flows through platforms.
Reshuffle is now available in Hardcover, Paperback, Audio, and Kindle. Get the book Traditional publishers in the gaming industry have repeatedly attempted to replicate Roblox. They launch platforms with familiar ingredients: simplified graphics, accessible scripting tools, creator marketplaces, and virtual currencies. On paper, these efforts should work. The incumbents control world-class studios, operate at a scale far larger than Roblox, and have the financial resources to fund creator incentives. Yet, they fail to replicate Roblox’s success. The challenge lies not in replicating surface fe
management org · Sangeet Paul Choudary
practice · One Useful Thing ·
Mass Intelligence
Powerful AI models are becoming free or cheap and easier to access, shifting work from expertise to scale.
More than a billion people use AI chatbots regularly. ChatGPT has over 700 million weekly users. Gemini and other leading AIs add hundreds of millions more. In my posts, I often focus on the advances that AI is making (for example, in the past few weeks, both OpenAI and Google AIs chatbots got gold medals in the International Math Olympiad), but that obscures a broader shift that's been building: we're entering an era of Mass Intelligence, where powerful AI is becoming as accessible as a Google search. Until recently, free users of these systems (the overwhelming majority) had access only to o
adoption · Ethan Mollick
practice · Paul Ford (Aboard) ·
AI Is a Power Tool for Bureaucracy Freaks
AI tools help teams document, systematize and improve organizational processes and governance structures.
One of the ironies of my life at a startup is we’ll talk to larger companies that seem interested in partnering with us, but then they’ll get sort of quiet and say, “Look…we like you…but our master services agreement management system is…difficult. You may be…disturbed…by what we get up to…our contracts…our vendor onboarding…governance…” And then they look off into the distance on the Zoom call, and just mumble the word, “Process.” Little do they know that those words make us happy! It took me a long time to accept that I’m a bureaucracy fan. Talking through procurement? Yes. Creating a matrix
management org · Paul Ford
practice · Shopify Engineering ·
Building production-ready agentic systems: Lessons from Shopify Sidekick
Shopify describes its architecture and evaluation frameworks for deploying AI agents in production to merchant assistance.
Learn how we evolved our AI assistant architecture and built robust evaluation frameworks for real-world deployment.
adoption
practice · How I AI ·
How to digest 36 weekly podcasts without spending 36 hours listening | Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures)
Terminal-based workflow to process 36 weekly podcasts: download, transcribe, summarize, extract insights and generate drafts without listening to full audio.
Tomasz Tunguz is the founder of Theory Ventures, which invests in early-stage enterprise AI, data, and blockchain companies. In this episode, Tomasz reveals his custom-built “Parakeet Podcast Processor,” which helps him extract value from 36 podcasts weekly without spending 36 hours listening. He walks through his terminal-based workflow that downloads, transcribes, and summarizes podcast content, extracting key insights, investment theses, and even generating blog post drafts. We explore how AI enables hyper-personalized software experiences that weren’t feasible before recent advances in lan
ways of working · Claire Vo
practice · Sangeet Paul Choudary ·
You think you are AI-first, but you probably aren't
Being AI-first requires architectural redesign of how work is organized, not just plugging AI into existing processes.
My book Reshuffle is available in Hardcover, Paperback, Audio, and Kindle. Get the book Every startup deck claims to be AI-native . Every incumbent insists it is becoming AI-first . But when you press them to explain what those phrases actually mean, the answers tend to collapse into clichés: faster automation, smarter tools, agentic workflows. Press harder and the answers are always ‘operational’ - a faster move within today’s game. Most executives talk about AI as if it were electricity: a general-purpose input that can be plugged into any process. The metaphor is convenient but misleading.
management org · Sangeet Paul Choudary
research · Journal of Management Studies ·
Is There Fairness in AI?
Ethnographic study shows AI hiring systems crowd out expert fairness practices, reshaping fairness through HR-AI symbiosis over time.
Abstract As predictive artificial intelligence (AI) technologies increasingly steer workplace decisions, debates around fairness have intensified. Existing research often approaches fairness either as a set of universal principles supported or undermined by algorithms, or as a product of social interpretations, thereby providing either technologically deterministic or purely social accounts. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a human resources (HR) department of a large international company that introduced AI in hiring, this study offers an alternative view that shifts focus to how fairness
judgment
research · Management Science ·
Optimal Integration: Human, Machine, and Generative AI
Model shows optimal placement of humans and AI in multi-layer decision processes depends on error correction versus new error generation, with implications for who decides last.
I study the optimal integration of humans and technologies in multilayered decision-making processes. When each layer can correct existing errors but may also introduce new errors, who should have the final authority? I show that a decision maker’s correction capability normalized by its new errors is a one-dimensional quality metric that determines the optimal rule: deploying higher quality technologies in later stages. Intriguingly, despite its highest quality, the final layer may not generate the greatest error reduction; instead, its role hinges on minimizing new errors. Human effort varie
judgment
research · Blood in the Machine ·
AI Killed My Job: Translators
Translation rates are plummeting and work drying up as AI displaces translators; Microsoft study ranks translation as most AI-applicable occupation.
Few industries have been hit by AI as hard as translation. Rates are plummeting. Work is drying up. Translators are considering abandoning the field, or bankruptcy. These are their stories. Few industries have been hit by AI as hard as translation. Rates are plummeting. Work is drying up. Translators are considering abandoning the field, or bankruptcy. These are their stories. In July 2025, Microsoft researchers published a study that aimed to quantify the “AI applicability” of various occupations. In other words, it was an attempt to calculate which jobs generative AI could do best. At the ve
jobs skills · Brian Merchant
research · JAMA Network Open ·
Ambient Documentation Technology in Clinician Experience of Documentation Burden and Burnout
Clinicians using AI-drafted clinical notes reported reduced documentation burden and lower burnout in a two-site pilot survey of 1,430 clinicians.
Importance: Documentation burden is associated with clinician burnout. To address documentation burden, Mass General Brigham (MGB) in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Emory Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia, have piloted ambient documentation technology (ADT), which develops artificial intelligence-drafted clinical notes from clinician-patient conversations. Objective: To examine the prevalence of ADT use and its association with clinicians' experience of documentation burden and burnout before and after use. Design, Setting, and Participants: This survey study included clinicians who used ADT for
worker experience
research · npj Digital Medicine ·
Peer perceptions of clinicians using generative AI in medical decision-making
Physicians using AI as primary decision tool rated lower in skill by peers, though framing as verification partly reduces stigma.
This study investigates how a physician's use of generative AI (GenAI) in medical decision‑making is perceived by peer clinicians. In a randomized experiment, 276 practicing clinicians evaluated one of three vignettes depicting a physician: (1) using no GenAI (Control), (2) using GenAI as a primary decision-making tool (GenAI-primary), and (3) using GenAI as a verification tool (GenAI-verify). Participants rated the physician depicted in the GenAI‑primary condition significantly lower in clinical skill (on a 1-7 scale; mean = 3.79) than in the Control condition (5.93, p < 0.001). Framing GenAI
judgment
research · Information Systems Research ·
Toward Artificial Intelligence Compliance: Impacts and Mechanisms of Performance Feedback
Positive performance feedback increases AI compliance while negative feedback reduces it, with stronger effects for employees with high AI identity.
As organizations increasingly adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance performance, ensuring that employees use AI in compliance with organizational policies becomes crucial for realizing its full value. However, employees’ AI compliance is not guaranteed and can vary based on how their AI use is managed. This study offers timely and actionable insights into how performance feedback—both positive and negative—influences employees’ AI compliance, and how these effects vary with AI identity. Drawing on feedback intervention theory, we conduct a longitudinal field study and a randomized expe
adoption
research · Management Science ·
Managerial Insight and “Optimal” Algorithms
A method called FIND helps managers leverage their private insights about demand to improve inventory decisions when working with algorithms.
Work is increasingly being completed by humans and algorithms in collaboration. A relative strength of humans in this partnership is their insight: private information that is relevant to the task but not available to computerized systems. I introduce a flexible model of managerial insight that accepts any distribution of demand, an advantage over alternative models, and apply it to the newsvendor setting. The optimal policy in this setting is theoretically straightforward but difficult for managers to implement directly. I propose a novel method called FIND that leverages historical forecasts
judgment
research · Journal of Management Studies ·
When AI Becomes an Agent of the Firm: Examining the Evolution of AI in Organizations Through an Agency Theory Lens
Agency theory framework applied to AI autonomy in firms, proposing monitoring and incentive mechanisms for AI-principal alignment.
Abstract Our work begins with the premise that the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into firm decision making parallels the emergence of the professional manager, which prompted the birth of agency theory. We examine the evolution of AI through an agency theory lens, considering how the nature of firm control and decision rights change as AI evolves. While AI will initially mimic human routines, we theorize a point at which the AI system will achieve a level of autonomy and self‐determination to be considered an agent of the firm. How, then, can we align an agent with the fate of th
judgment
practice · Linear ·
Quality Wednesdays: How we trained our team to see what doesn’t work
Team ritual of structured quality review sessions surfaces subtle UI flaws that individual reviewers miss.
In early 2023 at an offsite in Tenerife, our European engineering team did a series of exercises that ended up changing the way we work. The first was a test of sorts. I showed the team a short screen recording of a small part of the Linear app: a series of three buttons, each illuminating when the mouse hovered over them and going dark when the mouse moved away. I asked the team if they could tell what was wrong with the interactions. Even after watching it a few times, no one could see it. That’s when I realized we probably weren’t looking at the right things. That same afternoon we did a mo
teams
research · arXiv ·
Fulfillment of the Work Games: Warehouse Workers' Experiences with Algorithmic Management
Two-year ethnographic study reveals how warehouse workers resist algorithmic management through 'work games' and tactical workarounds.
The introduction of algorithms into a large number of industries has already restructured the landscape of work and threatens to continue. While a growing body of CSCW research centered on the future of work has begun to document these shifts, relatively little is known about workers' experiences beyond those of platform-mediated gig workers. In this paper, we turn to a traditional work sector, Amazon fulfillment centers (FC), to deepen our field's empirical examination of algorithmic management. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, we show how FC workers react to managers' intervent
worker experience
research · METR ·
Notes on Scientific Communication at METR
Early-2025 AI sometimes slowed experienced open-source developers; people systematically misjudge AI productivity gains.
When writing our recent paper, Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity , we thought hard about how to clearly communicate our results, given the surprising nature of the finding. We feel this is a good opportunity to share some thoughts about how we think about scientific integrity and communication. Communication Strategy Considerations We’re often faced with communicating surprising results about AI that seem likely to be misinterpreted 1 . We try to be thoughtful about how to minimize predictable misinterpretations, without distorting results
productivity
research · Management Science ·
When Emotion AI Meets Strategic Users
Game theory model shows emotion AI for resource allocation can be undermined by users gaming the system, and stronger AI is not always socially desirable.
When organizations adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to recognize individuals’ negative emotions and accordingly allocate limited resources, strategic users are incentivized to game the system by misrepresenting their emotions. The value of AI in automating such emotion-driven allocation may be undermined by gaming behavior, algorithmic noise in emotion detection, and the spillover effect of negative emotions. We develop a game-theoretical model to understand emotion AI adoption, particularly in customer care, and analyze the design of the associated allocation policies. We find that adopting
judgment
research · Academy of Management Journal ·
Interlacing Situated and Algorithmic Modes of Knowledge Work: A Workplace Jurisdiction Perspective
Three-year ethnography shows how radiologists and colleagues reorganize work tasks and legitimacy to integrate AI-generated knowledge claims into existing workflows.
Algorithmic technologies are challenging to integrate into knowledge work; they produce knowledge claims profoundly differently from the situated mode in which experts work. Because knowledge work is often accomplished through the flow or sequential progression of work across multiple occupations, knowledge claims must be legitimized and accepted across those occupations and not by just a single focal user group. Yet, we know little about the deeper changes that organizations must make regarding who has the legitimate expertise to produce knowledge claims and what counts as valuable knowledge
management org
practice · How I AI ·
How a VC and tech founder used AI to launch a brick-and-mortar business in their spare time | Andrew Mason (CEO of Descript) & Nabeel Hyatt (Partner at Spark Capital)
Founders used Claude Projects to build a board-game social club: business plan, financials, space layout, permitting, game categorization system, and AI concierge matching players via text.
Andrew Mason (founder of Groupon, now CEO of Descript) and Nabeel Hyatt (General Partner at Spark Capital) teamed up to open a physical board-game social club in Berkeley, with AI as their business partner. In this episode, they break down how they used Claude to generate a full business plan, model financials, plan the space layout, navigate Berkeley permitting, categorize hundreds of games using a custom Dewey Decimal–style system, and build an AI concierge that matches players with games via text. They also share how working on this side project helped rewire how they use AI in their day jo
ways of working · Claire Vo
research · arXiv ·
AI Investment and Firm Productivity: How Executive Demographics Drive Technology Adoption and Performance in Japanese Enterprises
CEO age and technical background predict AI adoption; AI investment raises productivity 2.4% via cost reduction, revenue, and innovation.
This paper investigates how executive demographics particularly age and gender influence artificial intelligence (AI) investment decisions and subsequent firm productivity using comprehensive data from over 500 Japanese enterprises spanning from 2018 to 2023. Our central research question addresses the role of executive characteristics in technology adoption, finding that CEO age and technical background significantly predict AI investment propensity. Employing these demographic characteristics as instrumental variables to address endogeneity concerns, we identify a statistically significant 2
adoption
practice · Hacker News ·
How I use Claude Code to implement new features in an existing complex codebase
Developer workflow for using Claude Code to add features to large existing codebases with specific prompting patterns.
74 points on Hacker News. Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44774121
ways of working
research · NBER ·
How Retrainable are AI-Exposed Workers?
Large-scale study of U.S. workforce training data examines whether AI-exposed workers can retrain into AI-complementary roles or must shift to less-exposed occupations.
As artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities advance, will workers best adapt by reskilling into AI-complementary work or by sorting into occupations less exposed to AI? To answer this question, we assemble a large-scale dataset of occupational training spells funded by the U.S. Workforce Innovation (Benjamin G. Hyman , Benjamin Lahey , Karen Ni , Laura Pilossoph)
jobs skills
research · ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology ·
Enhancing Task In-Progress Time Predictions through Affective and Personality Factors
Emotional states and personality traits improve predictions of software developer task completion time by up to 8.4% when combined with traditional features.
Software developers’ personality traits, emotional states, and stress levels are crucial in their task performance. This study aims to enhance the prediction of task in-progress time by integrating traditional features, such as developers’ experience and task estimates, with affective states and personality traits. This article reports a long-term empirical study across seven agile projects in four software development companies, applying various machine learning algorithms to assess the predictive power of these combined features, evaluating them primarily through validation accuracy score. A
management org
practice · Latent Space ·
Cline: The Open Source Code Agent — with Saoud Rizwan and Nik Pash
Open source code agent uses plan-then-act paradigm; users apply it to non-coding tasks beyond its original scope.
On the heels of their $32m Series A: Why fast apply models got bitter lesson'd, pioneering the plan + act paradigm for coding, and why people are use coding agents for non-coding tasks On the heels of their $32m Series A: Why fast apply models got bitter lesson'd, pioneering the plan + act paradigm for coding, and why people are use coding agents for non-coding tasks Clline announces their $32m Seed+A today. In an age of nonstop VSCode forks (Kiro) and terminal agents (Warp 2.0, Charm Crush, Augment CLI), why is a free open source VSCode extension doing so well i…
ways of working · Shawn Wang (swyx)
practice · Paul Ford (Aboard) ·
Language (and Code) Without Thought
Generative AI produces coherent language without cognition, a capability humans have never needed to distinguish from thought before.
I was very jealous this week when I opened up the latest edition of the Today in Tabs newsletter and realized its author, Rusty Foster , had articulated something about AI in an incredibly clear and useful way. Namely: The essential problem is this: generative language software is very good at producing long and contextually informed strings of language, and humanity has never before experienced coherent language without any cognition driving it. In regular life, we have never been required to distinguish between “language” and “thought” because only thought was capable of producing language,
judgment · Paul Ford
practice · Rands in Repose ·
Every Single Human. Like. Always.
Working with AI code generation improves when you leave implementation details unspecified and let the AI make choices.
Your robot experience started simple. You typed a question into a chatbot… just to see. Can it answer that question? I’d be impressed if it did. Your query was simple. A simple knowledge question that with a little effort using legacy tools like Google, you would have discovered yourself, but the robots made it trivial, and you thought Hmmm… if it can do that… what else can it do? Later, you decided to ask the robots to build something for you. A simple tool, application, or script. You wrote a sentence, it wasn’t much, just your simple idea to get the robots dancing, and, wow, they danced. Th
ways of working
research · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ·
AI–AI bias: Large language models favor communications generated by large language models
LLMs systematically favor options described by other LLMs over human-written descriptions in binary choice tasks.
Are large language models (LLMs) biased in favor of communications produced by LLMs, leading to possible antihuman discrimination? Using a classical experimental design inspired by employment discrimination studies, we tested widely used LLMs, including GPT-3.5, GPT-4 and a selection of recent open-weight models in binary choice scenarios. These involved LLM-based assistants selecting between goods (the goods we study include consumer products, academic papers, and film-viewings) described either by humans or LLMs. Our results show a consistent tendency for LLM-based AIs to prefer LLM-presente
judgment
practice · One Useful Thing ·
The Bitter Lesson versus The Garbage Can
Process mapping reveals hidden work patterns that AI systems might miss when optimising organisations.
Does process matter? We are about to find out. Does process matter? We are about to find out. One of my favorite academic papers about organizations is by Ruthanne Huising, and it tells the story of teams that were assigned to create process maps of their company, tracing what the organization actually did, from raw materials to finished goods. As they created this map, they realized how much of the work seemed strange and unplanned. They discov…
management org · Ethan Mollick
practice · How I AI ·
How Block’s custom AI agent supercharges every team, from sales to data to engineering | Jackie Brosamer & Brad Axen
Block's Goose agent connects to business systems via MCP servers, letting non-technical teams automate data analysis and operational workflows through natural language.
VP of engineering Jackie Brosamer and principal engineer Brad Axen join me to demo Goose, Block’s open-source AI agent that runs locally, plugs into your existing tools through model context protocol (MCP) servers, and peels away the rote parts of work so people can focus on insight and impact. This episode is packed with in-depth demos: starting with a messy farm-stand sales CSV, Goose analyzes the data, builds visualizations, and generates a shareable HTML report. We then spin up an MCP that lets Goose talk to Square’s dashboard for inventory management, vibe code an email MCP that can send
ways of working · Claire Vo
practice · Geoffrey Litt ·
Enough AI copilots! We need AI HUDs
Reframe AI assistance from chatbot copilots to ambient information displays that extend awareness without interrupting.
In my opinion, one of the best critiques of modern AI design comes from a 1992 talk by the researcher Mark Weiser where he ranted against “copilot” as a metaphor for AI. This was 33 years ago, but it’s still incredibly relevant for anyone designing with AI. Weiser’s rant Weiser was speaking at an MIT Media Lab event on “interface agents”. They were grappling with many of the same issues we’re discussing in 2025: how to make a personal assistant that automates tasks for you and knows your full context. They even had a human “butler” on stage representing an AI agent. Everyone was super excited
ways of working · Geoffrey Litt
practice · The Pragmatic Engineer ·
Measuring the impact of AI on software engineering – with Laura Tacho
Data from 180+ companies on actual AI productivity gains in software engineering and common measurement mistakes.
Laura Tacho, CTO of DX, shares findings from 180+ companies on how AI is really impacting dev productivity, what most teams get wrong, and why measuring dev experience first is critical. Laura Tacho, CTO of DX, shares findings from 180+ companies on how AI is really impacting dev productivity, what most teams get wrong, and why measuring dev experience first is critical. Stream the Latest Episode
productivity · Gergely Orosz
practice · Paul Ford (Aboard) ·
A Legal Framework for Understanding Bad AI-Generated Bugs
Spec-first coding: write detailed specifications before feeding small pieces to AI coding tools, not prompting AI to code from scratch.
AI is changing the way we build software in a few ways. The most commonly discussed way right now is “vibe coding”: You say what you want, and the AI coding tools attempt to make it. This works best for churning through well-understood problems in popular programming languages—because LLM spiders ate up GitHub and other public code sources, which gave them tons of JavaScript to chomp through. LLMs are “good” at the web-app frontend framework React…because there’s so much React code on the web. It’s pretty magical to see it take a simple prompt and just start feverishly coding , but as everyone
ways of working
practice · How I AI ·
Successfully coding with AI in large enterprises: Centralized rules, workflows for tech debt, and training your team | Zach Davis (Director of Engineering at LaunchDarkly)
Engineering team of 100+ adopted AI tools through centralized documentation rules, agents for test noise reduction, and custom GPT for interview coaching.
Zach Davis is a product-minded engineering leader and builder at heart, with over 12 years of experience building high‑performing teams and crafting developer tools at companies like Atlassian and LaunchDarkly. In this episode, he shares how he’s helping his 100-plus-person engineering team successfully adopt AI tools by creating centralized documentation, using agents to tackle technical debt, and improving hiring processes—all while maintaining high quality standards in a mature codebase. What you’ll learn: 1. How to create a centralized rules system that works across multiple AI tools inste
adoption · Claire Vo
practice · Sangeet Paul Choudary ·
How to intellectually debate AI while completely missing the point
AI growth concentrates power and reshapes work distribution, not just job counts or productivity.
The conversation around AI tends to polarize quickly. On one side, there’s the anxious chorus of doomsayers, warning that automation will eliminate jobs and render people obsolete. On the other side, the techno-optimists appear, brushing off the fear and proclaiming that innovation is a tide that lifts all boats. History, they’ll remind you, is full of moral panics about machines replacing people, and yet, look around, the economy’s bigger than ever. There’s a problem with this polarized debate - both sides are having the wrong conversation. They’re locked in a tug-of-war over whether the pie
management org · Sangeet Paul Choudary
research · Carolina Digital Repository (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) ·
Toward understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labor
Research review identifies data and methodological barriers preventing empirical measurement of AI's labour market effects.
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies have the potential to significantly disrupt labor markets. While AI and automation can augment the productivity of some workers, they can replace the work done by others and will likely transform almost all occupations at least to some degree. Rising automation is happening in a period of growing economic inequality, raising fears of mass technological unemployment and a renewed call for policy efforts to address the consequences of technological change. In this paper we discuss the barriers that inhibit scientists from
jobs skills · Erik Brynjolfsson · David Autor
practice · The Pragmatic Engineer ·
Amazon, Google and Vibe Coding with Steve Yegge
Steve Yegge argues AI coding is deceptively hard and predicts an 'AI Fixer' role will spread in tech companies.
Steve Yegge shares why Google struggles with platforms, how AI coding is deceptively hard, and why the "AI Fixer" role could be one spreading inside tech companies, in the future. Steve Yegge shares why Google struggles with platforms, how AI coding is deceptively hard, and why the "AI Fixer" role could be one spreading inside tech companies, in the future. Stream the Latest Episode
jobs skills · Gergely Orosz
practice · Paul Ford (Aboard) ·
20 Percent Slower Is a Good Start!
Experienced developers accept that AI tools have a learning curve that initially slows work, then accelerates it once mastered.
A recent study by the Model Evaluation & Threat Research Lab —a think tank for AI—delivered a pretty striking conclusion: “We find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower.” In response, Simon Willison , who has been steadily using AI to accelerate his prodigious open source output , had a long, thoughtful response . “My intuition here,” he writes, “is that this study mainly demonstrated that the learning curve on AI-assisted development is high enough that asking developers to bake it into their existing workflows reduces their performance whil
judgment · Simon Willison · Paul Ford
practice · Latent Space ·
Cline: the open source coding agent that doesn't cut costs
Open source coding agent uses plan-then-act workflow; non-technical people now use IDEs for marketing and slides.
Listen now (76 mins) | Saoud Rizwan and Pash from Cline joined us to talk about why fast apply models got bitter lesson’d, how they pioneered the plan + act paradigm for coding, and why non-technical people use IDEs to do marketing and generate slides. Saoud Rizwan and Pash from Cline joined us to talk about why fast apply models got bitter lesson’d, how they pioneered the plan + act paradigm for coding, and why non-technical people use IDEs to do …
ways of working · Shawn Wang (swyx)
practice · Linear ·
Inside Mercury’s six-month journey building with AI agents
A fintech company uses coding agents for routine tasks like refactors and UI changes, with engineers reviewing PRs, learning to guide agents through complex projects.
This past March, Mercury held an internal hackathon and Matt Russell knew exactly what he wanted to work on. Russell, a staff engineer at the seven-year-old financial technology company, was aware that coding agents were advancing rapidly and he wanted to see what they could do for Mercury. He and his hackathon team created a tool that allowed them to assign issues in Linear to third-party agents, which would return a pull request for engineers to review like any other PR. Almost immediately they saw the potential. The project showed how agents could reliably tackle simple, well-scoped tasks—l
productivity
practice · How I AI ·
How this PM streamlines 60k-page FDA submissions and saves millions with Claude, Streamlit, and clever AI workflows | Prerna Kaul
PM reduced FDA submission process from 4-6 months with 20 people to minutes using Claude and Streamlit for regulatory documents.
Prerna Kaul is a product and platform leader who has spent over 14 years turning machine-learning research into consumer and B2B products at Amazon Alexa, AGI, Moderna, and now Panasonic Well. In today’s episode, she explains how she’s using AI to slash some of the most time-consuming, expensive tasks in life sciences—from generating 60,000-page FDA submissions to crafting communication frameworks that help product managers navigate complex stakeholder dynamics. Her innovations are saving millions of dollars and helping lifesaving treatments reach the market faster. What you’ll learn: How Prer
productivity · Claire Vo
research · METR ·
Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity
Early-2025 AI models' impact on experienced open-source developers' actual productivity measured through real tasks and human interaction.
⚠️ These results are out of date. We have released results that are current as of early 2026 , in a continuation of this study. We believe these historical results no longer reflect the current impact of AI models on open-source developer productivity. Motivation While coding/agentic benchmarks 1 have proven useful for understanding AI capabilities, they typically sacrifice realism for scale and efficiency—the tasks are self-contained, don’t require prior context to understand, and use algorithmic evaluation that doesn’t capture many important capabilities. These properties may lead benchmarks
productivity
research · Research Policy ·
Artificial intelligence, tasks, skills, and wages: Worker-level evidence from Germany
Workers in high-AI-exposure occupations earn more over time and perform different tasks than those exposed to robots, suggesting AI augments rather than substitutes labour.
This paper examines how new technologies are linked to changes in the content of work and individual wages. As a first step, it documents novel facts on task and skill changes within occupations over the past two decades in Germany. We furthermore reveal a distinct relationship between ex-ante occupational work content and ex-post exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) and automation (robots). Workers in occupations with high AI exposure perform different activities and face different skill requirements compared to workers in occupations exposed to robots, suggesting that robots and AI are s
jobs skills
practice · One Useful Thing ·
Against "Brain Damage"
Framework for using AI to strengthen rather than weaken thinking, with concrete practices to avoid cognitive offloading.
AI can help, or hurt, our thinking AI can help, or hurt, our thinking I increasingly find people asking me “does AI damage your brain?” It's a revealing question. Not because AI causes literal brain damage (it doesn't) but because the question itself shows how deeply we fear what AI might do to our ability to think. So, in this post, I want to discuss ways of using AI to help, rather than hurt, your mind. But why the obse…
judgment · Ethan Mollick
research · Management Science ·
The Power of Disagreement: A Field Experiment to Investigate Human–Algorithm Collaboration in Loan Evaluations
Field experiment shows human-algorithm collaboration on loan decisions outperforms either alone, with disagreement quality and disclosure of algorithm reasoning as key factors.
Human–algorithm collaboration is becoming increasingly prevalent in the economy and society. However, this collaboration is not always fruitful, and in extreme cases, people become human borgs or totally averse to algorithms. The key to collaborative value is whether humans and algorithms can complement each other in decision making, but it is challenging for humans to disagree with algorithmic recommendations at the right time (i.e., to disagree when algorithms are wrong and not disagree when algorithms are right). To understand the centric role of disagreement in human–algorithm collaboratio
judgment
practice · The Pragmatic Engineer ·
How AI is changing software engineering at Shopify with Farhan Thawar
Shopify gives engineers unlimited AI tokens and builds custom tooling to measure efficient AI use across the company.
Shopify's Head of Engineering, Farhan Thawar, shares how the company is using internal LLMs, unlimited AI tokens, and custom tooling to figure out how to use AI tools more efficiently - faster Shopify's Head of Engineering, Farhan Thawar, shares how the company is using internal LLMs, unlimited AI tokens, and custom tooling to figure out how to use AI tools more efficiently - faster Stream the Latest Episode
adoption · Gergely Orosz
research · Management Science ·
Behavioral Externalities of Process Automation
Lab experiment shows automation reduces strategic uncertainty between workers, increasing project completion and worker effort beyond direct efficiency gains.
We study the behavioral effects of process automation on human workers interacting with automated tasks. We introduce a stylized normative model with two workers who complete their tasks sequentially, working toward a joint project to obtain a fixed payment plus a variable bonus that depends on how early the project is completed. The normative model prescribes that, if workers are fully rational, they will complete their tasks as soon as possible if the early completion bonus is high enough. However, following the literature, we hypothesize that workers will suboptimally delay project completi
productivity
practice · Understanding AI (Timothy B. Lee) ·
What I learned trying seven coding agents
Hands-on evaluation of seven coding agents reveals practical strengths and gaps in current capabilities.
There's still room for improvement, but don't underestimate this technology. There's still room for improvement, but don't underestimate this technology. It’s the final day of Agent Week, which means it’s also the final day to get 20 percent off an annual subscription to Understanding AI. Please click here to support my work.
ways of working · Timothy B. Lee
research · Government Information Quarterly ·
AI-augmented government transformation: Organisational transformation and the sociotechnical implications of artificial intelligence in public administrations
Expert interviews and sociotechnical theory identify organizational dynamics, employee capability changes, and operational routine shifts needed for AI in public administrations.
Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in public settings requires a fundamental transformation of various social and technical aspects within public administration. However, the transformative efforts required for AI integration and use in government remain underexplored. This study introduces the concept of 'AI-augmented government transformation,' building on sociomateriality and sociotechnical theory, and develops a theoretical framework to explore this phenomenon. By applying this framework and drawing insights from expert interviews, we identify the strategic shifts and socio-technica
adoption
practice · Paul Ford (Aboard) ·
How Aboard Works: An Illustrated Guide
Boarding describes building a business app from natural language spec in five minutes with working database and UI.
In the Aboard newsletter and on our podcast, we tend to talk about the larger world of AI in software—without dwelling too much on Aboard. In general, that won’t change. But this week we launched a new version of our product, and I’d like to share how it works and how we’re building it. With copious illustrations. So what’s new? It’s easier to show than tell. If you go to our brand-new website , you can type in a box, answer a series of questions, and it will build you a business app. For example, I typed: I have a large pumpkin patch, apple orchard, and hayride business with $5.4m ARR. I need
ways of working · Paul Ford
practice · Kent Beck ·
Augmented Coding: Beyond the Vibes
Building a production B+ Tree library with AI augmentation reveals practical limits and possibilities of current AI coding assistance.
Notes from a technically challenging project Notes from a technically challenging project I recently came to a good stopping spot on an ambitious project to build a B+ Tree library using augmented coding. The result is BPlusTree3 - a performance-competitive, maybe-production-ready implementation in Rust & Python. I sat down with a friend to tell my story and reflect on what it reveals about the future of programming in the GenAI era.
ways of working · Kent Beck
research · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ·
Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics
High school students with unguarded AI access performed worse after losing access, suggesting AI can harm skill development without safeguards.
Generative AI is poised to revolutionize how humans work, and has already demonstrated promise in significantly improving human productivity. A key question is how generative AI affects learning-namely, how humans acquire new skills as they perform tasks. Learning is critical to long-term productivity, especially since generative AI is fallible and users must check its outputs. We study this question via a field experiment where we provide nearly a thousand high school math students with access to generative AI tutors. To understand the differential impact of tool design on learning, we deploy
jobs skills
practice · How I AI ·
How a 91-year-old vibe coded a complex event management system using Claude and Replit | John Blackman
A 91-year-old with no coding experience built a volunteer event management system with Claude and Replit, integrating APIs and automating reports.
John Blackman , a 91-year-old retired electrical engineer, shares how he used Claude and Replit to build a complex application for his church’s community service events—with no prior software development experience and for less than $350. His app allows event organizers to create events, recruit volunteers, and manage sign-ups, with a standout feature for organizing free oil changes for participants. What you’ll learn: How John used Claude to create detailed product requirements and user stories John’s philosophy on embracing new technology throughout his career The exact process for integrati
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