Respect for People in an AI World?

 

Is ‘Respect for People’ possible in the age of AI? A generation ago, the Toyota Production System (TPS) doubled down on this idea and changed the world. Their revolutionary idea was to release the ‘genius of the organization’ through ‘Total Involvement’.  Nowadays, more than a few Tech leaders envision billion-dollar companies with ‘very few people – ideally just one.’ Is ‘Respect for People’ a dead idea?

Middle Management is Over…(?!)

At recent conference a well-known Tech leader opined that, ‘Middle management is over.’ His plan to ‘create value’ amounts to 1) continually replace people with AI agents, and 2) maintain a skeleton crew to ‘manage the work’. 

Avarice & nihilism aside, this hare-brained plan ignores uncomfortable facts, the most obvious being: If we fire everybody, who is going to buy our stuff? Other problems include:

·       Work is messy. You have to deal with internal & external customers, supply chain partners, regulators, banks & insurers, and eccentric, quirky people up & down your value streams and customer journeys. How will you sustain these relationships without people?

·       People are good at building essential relationships – AI agents are not. People mentor younger team members. They know the company’s work better than anyone. As Toyota observed, if you release smart, well-trained people on big problems, they’ll release a tsunami of value.

·       AI agents are expensive and can mess up big-time. The question is not ‘Can an AI agent do this for us?’ The question is: ‘Can an AI agent do it better & cheaper than a human, and with less hassle & risk?

The World is More Than Databases & Loops

‘Software Brain’ seeks to flatten the world and all human experience into a series of databases and loops. Big AI agents can then, presumably, issue instructions and ‘manage the work’.  Here’s the underlying mindset: If the word does not align with the database – change the world. 

In fact, all these things that look like a computer are nothing like a computer. The Law, for example (an early, seemingly easy target for AI agents), is much more than databases and loops. It’s messy, ambiguous and full of grey areas. You can argue different sides and come to different conclusions. The same is true of Medicine, Engineering, Accounting, and Actuarial Science, not to mention the Arts including the visual arts, music, creative writing, theatre and film-making.

So, this thing [Life] that looks like a computer is not at all like computer. Not everything is a loop. Not everything humans experience can be captured in a database. Trying to flatten people & life in this way is the polar opposite of ‘Respect for People’.

People do not consider code-writing to be a blessing. The idea of linking all their databases & automating their lives with Claude Co-work frightens & disgusts them. People hate AI because it flattens them. It's not a marketing problem or a bug - it's a center feature of Software Brain.

TPS remains a sharp rebuke to those who dream of a ‘billion-dollar company of one person’. Is eliminating middle management & destroying entire industries something to brag about?  Big Tech leaders are now routinely booed off the stage. Is it any wonder?

Best wishes,

Pascal Dennis         E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org