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AI Is Reshaping the Architecture of Work, But Are We Looking in the Wrong Place?
In episode 4 of Creative Intelligence, host Kartik Hosanagar speaks with author and strategist Sangeet Paul Choudary (author of Platform Revolution, Reshuffle) to challenge a widely circulated idea: “AI won’t take your job, but someone using AI will.”
Sangeet calls that framing seductive — and dangerously incomplete. Together, they explore how AI is not just automating tasks or augmenting individual workers, it’s reconfiguring systems, workflows, organizational power dynamics, and even the firm itself.
Here are the most meaningful takeaways from the conversation:
1. AI Doesn’t Just Change Tasks — It Changes Entire Systems of Work
Many conversations about AI focus on individual roles: will they be replaced or augmented? But this focus can be misleading. Sangeet argues that AI reshapes the systems in which work happens, including the workflows, hierarchies, coordination models, and competitive logic of companies. The message: don’t just ask what AI means for your job. Ask what it means for your company, your customers, and your entire category.
“Jobs don’t exist in isolation. They’re embedded in organizations, which are embedded in ecosystems. AI is changing all of it.” — Sangeet Paul Choudary
2. Specialized Skills Are Becoming Generalist Capabilities
AI tools make it possible for more people to do what used to require deep domain expertise. Sangeet likens this to the introduction of word processors, which didn’t simply augment typists. They eliminated the role altogether by redistributing typing across the organization. We’re seeing the same pattern with coding, design, data analysis, and more. As a skill becomes widespread, the value shifts to whatever remains scarce — creativity, integration, or judgment.
“You weren’t replaced by a typist using a word processor; you were replaced by a system that no longer needed typists.” — Sangeet Paul Choudary
3. Value Shifts from Execution to Constraint Navigation
As AI commoditizes execution, writing, analyzing, coding, Sangeet suggests we turn our attention to what remains constrained: things that can’t be easily automated or generalized. This idea reframes skill-building entirely: the future belongs to those who know where the new bottlenecks are and build capability around them.
“As a professor, I used to focus on knowledge transfer. Now I focus on curation, motivation, and inspiration, the things AI can’t yet do well.” — Kartik Hosanagar
4. Power Dynamics Within Organizations Will Shift
AI’s uneven impact across functions will shift influence inside companies. Functions that rely heavily on repeatable knowledge work — like IT support, customer service, or internal knowledge management — may lose centrality. Others, especially those working on complex, cross-disciplinary problems or proprietary workflows, will gain leverage. Leaders and workers alike should ask: What am I responsible for that is hard to replace, hard to scale, and central to our evolving workflows?
“Power in organizations comes from where the bottlenecks are, from who controls coordination, risk, and decision-making.” — Sangeet Paul Choudary
5. The Stable Firm is a Myth. AI is Rewiring the Competitive Landscape
AI is not just changing how firms operate, it’s changing why they exist. Smaller, agile teams using AI to replicate scale are now viable competitors to incumbent firms. Meanwhile, toolmakers (e.g., foundation model companies) may become competitors to their own customers, especially if they own the training data. In some cases, firms that used to outsource expertise are now using AI to internalize capabilities. In others, models trained on your data may be competing with you directly.
“Today’s firms were built for a system of competition that’s already changing. Size used to be an advantage, now it might be a liability.” — Sangeet Paul Choudary
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