Everyone's talking about what AI does to the work. This episode is about what it does to people.

For generations, the way you got good at a job was by doing the small, unglamorous work first. That entry-level grind was the training ground where judgment and expertise got built. AI is very good at that grind, which raises a harder question than "is AI good or bad for us": if the rungs people used to climb are quietly disappearing, what grows the next generation?

This week, Emily Shelton and co-host Katie Dunn, in her first time in the chair, sit down with business anthropologist and author Meghan French Dunbar to get into it. The conversation moves from the disappearing entry-level rung to what genuinely can't be automated, why care is a trainable leadership skill rather than a personality trait, and how leaders can hold the real benefits of AI and its real costs at the same time.

In this episode we cover:

• Why entry-level work has always been the training ground, and what happens when AI absorbs it
• AI as a thinking partner rather than a labour replacement, including Meghan's honest take on sycophancy and how she retrained hers to push back
• What to do with the time AI frees up, and why the instinct to cram it with more work misses the point
• Care as a leadership skill rather than a personality trait, and why it can be trained
• One thing anyone can do tomorrow, whatever their level, to make their work a little more human

Referenced in this episode

• "Generative AI at Work" (Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond, Stanford and MIT), the source for the 14% overall and 34% novice productivity findings: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/generative-ai-work
• "Mental Health at Work: Managers and Money" (UKG Workforce Institute), on managers affecting mental health as much as a spouse: https://www.ukg.com/company/newsroom/managers-impact-our-mental-health-more-doctors-therapists-and-same-spouses
• Torani's people-first opportunity model: https://www.inc.com/jennifer-conrad/toranis-growth-strategy-no-layoffs-local-jobs-shared-ownership/91284581
• Erin Wade's colour-code system at Homeroom: her EEOC testimony at https://www.eeoc.gov/testimony-erin-wade-founder-and-ceo-homeroom, and her 2018 Washington Post op-ed