How Will AI Transform Productivity? | Deep Questions with Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, let's see here. We got a written question from Sam.

00:00:05.520 | Sam asked, "What is the potential of AI in productivity optimization and how will it work?"

00:00:16.080 | Well, my theory on this, my prediction on this, maybe I say my optimistic or

00:00:24.240 | wistful hope for the role of AI in the future of work is going to be the AI chief of staff.

00:00:33.440 | So I've long argued this is the natural terminal point for the intersection of AI with, in

00:00:41.840 | particular, knowledge work or office work, is being able to implement in software something

00:00:48.480 | like a chief of staff role, but for many more positions than we could ever afford to actually

00:00:52.960 | have chief of staff. So obviously, we think of chief of staff, it's a prominent role in political

00:00:59.840 | life. The president of the United States famously has a chief of staff. West Wing fans know about

00:01:05.920 | Leo McGarry on the West Wing. And they really manage the president's life. You never see the

00:01:11.600 | president, if you watch the West Wing, you never see Martin Sheen's character looking at calendars

00:01:15.840 | or going through email or trying to figure out what should I be working on. The chief of staff

00:01:20.720 | comes in, okay, here's what you're doing next. All right, now we have to go meet with this person.

00:01:24.640 | Okay, I need you to read this. Read this briefing packet, you're going to need it when we meet with

00:01:28.800 | the joint chief of staff later or whatever, right? That idea then made its way into the business

00:01:37.600 | world. A lot of it is big in Silicon Valley, a lot of big Silicon Valley CEO and entrepreneur

00:01:42.160 | investor types, hire chief of staff to help organize these parts of their lives so they

00:01:47.520 | could focus more on actually where they add value. There's this little insider, Cal Newport tidbit,

00:01:56.080 | but if you look at the back of So Good They Can't Ignore You, my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You,

00:01:59.360 | I have a blurb from Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and it's a big investment fund now,

00:02:07.120 | is one of the PayPal mafia types from way back when. I have that blurb because my long time and

00:02:13.600 | good friend Ben Kastnoka at the time was Reid Hoffman's chief of staff. And that's how Ben got

00:02:20.240 | started in the Silicon Valley world. Anyways, AI might make these accessible to individuals.

00:02:28.400 | So in this vision, your AI chief of staff entirely implemented in software, it's a software agent,

00:02:36.480 | helps you actually organize your work day to the extent that you no longer are in email,

00:02:43.040 | you're no longer even really looking at calendars. It is communicating with other AI agents,

00:02:48.080 | figuring out what you should be working on, getting you the materials you need,

00:02:50.720 | helping to figure out your day so that like the president of the United States, when you come into

00:02:55.360 | your office, your AI agent is like, "Look, I know you're working on whatever, this initiative,

00:03:01.360 | this report you're writing, I've gathered resources for you. They're in this folder over here.

00:03:05.840 | By the way, there's a couple of meetings we put on your calendar for this afternoon because

00:03:10.640 | so and so need to meet you this, but don't worry, they're in the calendar. I'll get you the

00:03:14.480 | information when we get there. And then in the afternoon, you need to check in on X, Y, and Z

00:03:21.920 | later. Don't worry, when we get there, I'll load up the information you need to remind you where

00:03:26.320 | we are and tell you where that information needs to go. Oh, at the end of the day, we need to sign

00:03:30.800 | these things," or whatever, right? You know what I'm talking about? AI will be able to do that.

00:03:35.440 | And it will leave cognitively skilled knowledge workers to spend most of their time actually

00:03:40.880 | applying their hardware skills to adding value to information, like doing the fundamental act,

00:03:44.640 | the fundamental act of knowledge work, economic value creation. And I think that will be

00:03:50.240 | transformative for that economic sector. I think that will increase the output. So the value created

00:03:58.160 | per skilled knowledge worker will increase by a factor of two to five. This is going to be so

00:04:03.520 | powerful that it might have unexpected negative ramifications. If we become that much more

00:04:10.000 | productive, we might actually see reductions in how many people we need to run various industrial

00:04:15.440 | knowledge sectors. Anyway, this will be, I think, the future of AI enhanced productivity. It's not

00:04:21.840 | just speculation. I've talked to CEOs of knowledge work AI companies that talk about this as being

00:04:28.080 | the goal. AI agents that talk to other people's AI agents and help organize your workday.

00:04:33.600 | So it's possible that AI is going to eliminate this world of hyperactive hive mind,

00:04:40.000 | overhead spiraling, constant communication collaboration that afflicts us today.

00:04:44.720 | The fact that we have to do that all on behalf of ourselves is perhaps a temporary dark period

00:04:54.720 | in the history of this economic sector. And maybe AI will be part of the solution.

00:04:58.880 | Before we get there, I will just add, we can solve a lot of these problems even without that

00:05:04.720 | technology, just through more structured processes and more intelligent approaches to how we

00:05:10.720 | collaborate. And this is what my book, A World Without Email is all about. So we don't have to

00:05:14.800 | wait for the AI chiefs of staff to free ourselves from this unproductive overhead. We can start

00:05:20.480 | making changes right now, but eventually whether or not we make those changes in our processes,

00:05:24.960 | AI, I think will save us.

How Will AI Transform Productivity? | Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Chapters