A comparison of human capacity and task allocation before and after AI assistance
Figure 1. Conceptual comparison of human task allocation before and after AI assistance. Although total human capacity remains constant, AI reduces the human effort required per task and thereby increases the number of tasks that can be undertaken; consequently, orchestration and dynamic context switching emerge as critical higher-order capabilities.

  1. Claude and GPT continue to improve at a remarkable pace. It is becoming difficult even to imagine where the limits of intelligence might lie. In an age of AGI, where intelligence appears to have no ceiling, how should humanity live?

  2. Suppose that a person’s total capacity is 100. Before AI, imagine that completing one task required 50 units of human effort. Finishing two tasks would then consume the entire capacity of 100; that was what it meant to work hard. Even in activities such as solving mathematical problems or conducting research, AI has reduced the amount of work required and opened much easier paths to a solution. Now suppose that AI can contribute 40 units to each task, leaving only 10 units for the human. Does that mean we complete the same two tasks and work only 20 units instead of 100?

  3. Probably not. Human capacity remains 100 even after the arrival of AI. If anyone in the world uses 10 units of effort on each of ten tasks and thereby deploys their full capacity, I compete with that person. To survive, I must learn to operate at a similar scale. The efficiency created by technology does not simply become leisure; under competition, it becomes the new baseline.

  4. As long as I assume that I will continue to work hard, the total effort I must expend remains 100. What changes is the structure of that effort. In the past, it was enough to concentrate deeply on two tasks. Now I must keep ten tasks moving and coordinate them without allowing them to interfere with one another. A new higher-order task has appeared above execution itself: orchestration.

  5. This makes prioritization more important than ever. The human operating system is not as well suited to parallel processing as a computer. AI can work on many tasks simultaneously, whereas a person can engage deeply with only one context at a time. The essential skill, therefore, is not to distribute equal energy to every task. It is to reallocate priority and effort dynamically, and to switch contexts at the right moment with minimal loss. In the age of AI, what we must change is not our total capacity, but the OS scheduler that allocates it.