The vanishing desk and the rise of AI power

Work as we’ve come to know it is dissolving. The physical office, the post in the factory, the schedule, even the hierarchy, are beginning to be vestiges of a model that AI is making redundant. Inertia will delay many companies from understanding this, although as I pointed out a few months ago AI is not just taking over more and more tasks, it’s beginning to occupy the role of the boss, dictating what needs to be done and evaluating how we do it. But as the desk disappears, the algorithm consolidates: ubiquitous, impersonal, and, for now, virtually unsupervised.

The end of the office: what happens when AI becomes the boss

That’s where the problem arises: if the algorithm is taking over, who controls the algorithm? And in this context, what is happening in the United States and Europe seems to offer two opposing answers to that same question. In California, the governor has signed the Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act, requiring large companies to publish security protocols and incident reports. On paper it doesn’t sound bad… but in practice it lacks audit mechanisms, and leaves a very wide margin for self-regulation. In other words: it is a law…