All right, let's see here. We got a written question from Sam. Sam asked, "What is the potential of AI in productivity optimization and how will it work?" Well, my theory on this, my prediction on this, maybe I say my optimistic or wistful hope for the role of AI in the future of work is going to be the AI chief of staff.

So I've long argued this is the natural terminal point for the intersection of AI with, in particular, knowledge work or office work, is being able to implement in software something like a chief of staff role, but for many more positions than we could ever afford to actually have chief of staff.

So obviously, we think of chief of staff, it's a prominent role in political life. The president of the United States famously has a chief of staff. West Wing fans know about Leo McGarry on the West Wing. And they really manage the president's life. You never see the president, if you watch the West Wing, you never see Martin Sheen's character looking at calendars or going through email or trying to figure out what should I be working on.

The chief of staff comes in, okay, here's what you're doing next. All right, now we have to go meet with this person. Okay, I need you to read this. Read this briefing packet, you're going to need it when we meet with the joint chief of staff later or whatever, right?

That idea then made its way into the business world. A lot of it is big in Silicon Valley, a lot of big Silicon Valley CEO and entrepreneur investor types, hire chief of staff to help organize these parts of their lives so they could focus more on actually where they add value.

There's this little insider, Cal Newport tidbit, but if you look at the back of So Good They Can't Ignore You, my book, So Good They Can't Ignore You, I have a blurb from Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn and it's a big investment fund now, is one of the PayPal mafia types from way back when.

I have that blurb because my long time and good friend Ben Kastnoka at the time was Reid Hoffman's chief of staff. And that's how Ben got started in the Silicon Valley world. Anyways, AI might make these accessible to individuals. So in this vision, your AI chief of staff entirely implemented in software, it's a software agent, helps you actually organize your work day to the extent that you no longer are in email, you're no longer even really looking at calendars.

It is communicating with other AI agents, figuring out what you should be working on, getting you the materials you need, helping to figure out your day so that like the president of the United States, when you come into your office, your AI agent is like, "Look, I know you're working on whatever, this initiative, this report you're writing, I've gathered resources for you.

They're in this folder over here. By the way, there's a couple of meetings we put on your calendar for this afternoon because so and so need to meet you this, but don't worry, they're in the calendar. I'll get you the information when we get there. And then in the afternoon, you need to check in on X, Y, and Z later.

Don't worry, when we get there, I'll load up the information you need to remind you where we are and tell you where that information needs to go. Oh, at the end of the day, we need to sign these things," or whatever, right? You know what I'm talking about? AI will be able to do that.

And it will leave cognitively skilled knowledge workers to spend most of their time actually applying their hardware skills to adding value to information, like doing the fundamental act, the fundamental act of knowledge work, economic value creation. And I think that will be transformative for that economic sector. I think that will increase the output.

So the value created per skilled knowledge worker will increase by a factor of two to five. This is going to be so powerful that it might have unexpected negative ramifications. If we become that much more productive, we might actually see reductions in how many people we need to run various industrial knowledge sectors.

Anyway, this will be, I think, the future of AI enhanced productivity. It's not just speculation. I've talked to CEOs of knowledge work AI companies that talk about this as being the goal. AI agents that talk to other people's AI agents and help organize your workday. So it's possible that AI is going to eliminate this world of hyperactive hive mind, overhead spiraling, constant communication collaboration that afflicts us today.

The fact that we have to do that all on behalf of ourselves is perhaps a temporary dark period in the history of this economic sector. And maybe AI will be part of the solution. Before we get there, I will just add, we can solve a lot of these problems even without that technology, just through more structured processes and more intelligent approaches to how we collaborate.

And this is what my book, A World Without Email is all about. So we don't have to wait for the AI chiefs of staff to free ourselves from this unproductive overhead. We can start making changes right now, but eventually whether or not we make those changes in our processes, AI, I think will save us.