AI is forcing a reckoning: companies must decide what work they actually want humans doing

Betty Junod's essay argues that AI tools are exposing decades of busywork—tasks we've kept humans doing not because they require human judgment, but because we've always done them that way. Now that AI can handle them, organizations face an uncomfortable choice: automate the work away, or admit these tasks were padding.

The core shift: instead of AI simply making existing jobs faster, AI is revealing which parts of those jobs were never essential. This forces a conversation teams have been avoiding—which activities actually need a person, and which ones do we keep only out of habit or job-protection anxiety.

For you: if your role involves routine knowledge work (report writing, email triage, meeting notes, first-pass analysis), you're about to see your employer choose between retraining you for higher-value work or eliminating the role entirely. Teams that proactively reshape jobs around what only humans do well will retain workers; those that treat AI as a cost-cutter will face talent exodus. The gap between these two outcomes is measured in months, not years.