The Future of Work, In Progress

A new newsletter that helps you understand and direct the future of work in an AI economy

This is a crosspost from Work/Code, a new newsletter project by me and journalist and author Markus Albers. Each season, we dive into one theme at the intersection of AI, labor, politics and society. In interviews with technologists, academics, creatives, workers, and managers, we look behind the headlines and uncover the quiet revolutions unfolding inside companies, economies, and countries. Subscribe to our first series on AI and labor markets, starting in October.

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For the most part of history, work has been a central theme of humanity: Agriculture laid the foundation for human expansion and the the first empires in history. The specialisation of labor led to the renaissance and the first age of discovery. During the Industrial Revolution, mechanization, steam power, electricity and scientific management allowed for mass production; and globalization finally created a global division of labor between the developed world and emerging economies.

Labor also defined our identities as peasants or craftsmen, capitalists or workers. Labor structured our societies into estates and classes and inspired the emergence of new social movements.

Artificial Intelligence will re-define what we mean by labor. Just like the industrial revolution changed the work of craftsmen, AI may lead to large-scale automation of knowledge work and possibly a modern era “Engel’s Pause” with decreasing wages and a decline of hubs for knowledge work like London or New York.

Or will we enter into a new era of discovery, where AI helps to solve humanity’s biggest problems such as cancer, climate change or poverty?

Whatever we believe the long-term vision of the future of work is, it begins now. And we shape this future.

The “Henry Ford moment” in AI lies still ahead

This newsletter explores how artificial intelligence changes how we work through the lens of the engineers who develop this technology and the leaders who drive the adoption of AI in business and society.

Each season, we dive into one theme at the intersection of AI, work, politics and society. In interviews with technologists, academics, creatives, workers, and managers, we look behind the headlines and uncover the quiet revolutions unfolding inside companies, economies, and countries.

In this first season, we dive into the impact that AI will have on our labor markets. With Oxford professor Carl Benedikt Frey, we discuss how the global redistribution of knowledge work might change cities and why it is crucial that policymakers support the creation of new, AI-driven industries. Lufthansa executive Cindy Richter explains how AI can be a powerful partner for creatives and support the creation of new services. Jonas Andrulis, founder and CEO of the AI firm Aleph Alpha, cautions that off-the-shelves chat bots may only have limited usefulness for enterprise AI and argues that public administrations should become “first users” of AI. GitHub’s Matt Nigh gives a powerful example of how their “AI Playbook” drives bottom-up innovation rather than top-down anxiety and philosopher Hans Rusinek expands on why AI is not a shortcut for thinking and innovation and the importance of (some) suffering at work.

We are still at the beginning of this journey. Electricity was already well established in factories in the 1880s, but it was not before the 1920s, when Henry Ford re-designed the factory floor that the productivity gains of electricity could be fully utilised. By 1923, the Ford Motor Company was 30 times more productive than its competitors, thanks to Ford’s creative destruction on the factory floor.¹

In their book “Power and Prediction”, Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb write:

Henry Ford could not have invented the production line for the Model T car with steam power. Only electricity, decades after its commercial promise was shown, could achieve that.²

Ford was not only a car manufacturer. He also re-invented the system of production at the time and therefore altered the industrial production forever. We are still ahead of the “Ford moment” in the AI economy.

Exploring paths into the AI economy

The path to this AI economy will be experimental. This is where this newsletter begins: We aim to give technologists, leaders, policy makers and workers a platform to share their perspective and provide inspiration to others. We want to spark a conversation not just between the people we interview for this series but also with you, our readers.

And while you and our guests will be the main focus of this newsletter, we also hope that we will be able to contribute to the debate.

Markus is a long-time expert on the future of work and author of various bestsellers on this topic, most recently a book about why digital collaboration tools may make us less productive and how AI might resolve this dilemma.³ The book (published in German) has been picked-up by international publications like Monocle.

Daniel has worked in tech policy for over a decade and is an author and speaker on remote work and AI policy.

Each season, we want to explore one aspect on the topic of AI and work from different perspectives and publish five conversations in the course of three weeks. In between, we would like to hear from you and read about your own experiences in the comments.

In the coming weeks, you will be able to read about our conversations with Carl Benedikt Frey, Cindy Richter, Jonas Andrulis, Matt Nigh and Hans Rusinek. In the final post, Markus and I will distill what we have learned through the interviews and the conversations with you in between.

We hope that you join this conversation to this project, leave comments and share your experience. If you like, forward this newsletter to your friends, colleagues and family. And if you have not subscribed yet – do it now.

1. Heitman, William F. The Knowledge Work Factory: Turning the Productivity Paradox into Value for Your Business. McGraw Hill, 2018.

2. Agrawal, Ajay; Gans, Joshua; Goldfarb, Avi: Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard Business Review Press, 2022.

3. Albers, Markus: Die Optimierungslüge: Warum wir keine Zeit mehr haben, unsere Arbeit zu machen. brand eins books, 2025.