Welcome to new subscribers from VC Whisper (my latest experiment in automating venture). Parth’s Playground are one-off essays on topics I’m thinking through (see here and here). Enjoy!
The real risk of AI isn’t that it takes our jobs. It’s that we’ve been wrong about what our jobs actually are.
There is a lot of anxiety around how AI is going to affect work. My current mental model is the following:
AI is very good at automating non-core work.
AI also helps augment core work.
The challenge is what we think is core work, may just be non-core.
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Chess was solved decades ago. Magnus can’t beat the chess engine running on a flip phone. Yet chess is more popular than ever, and we all still follow Magnus. Why?
Turns out the core work for Magnus is not to solve the game of chess.
It’s actually to provide entertainment and inspiration to other humans by showing what he can do.
A machine can play 20 blind games simultaneously. But we are awed when Magnus does it as a human. His core work is the masterful display of pushing the limits of focus and creativity within the constraints of human biology.
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A VP recently told me that his most nihilistic engineers re: AI were the ones who saw coding as a means to solve puzzles. The ones who viewed coding as a means to solve problems were ecstatic.
My interpretation is that the former category – the puzzle solvers – misunderstood the core work for this specific role.
At most companies, software engineering is not meant to solve puzzles. The goal —for better or worse — is to achieve business outcomes.
Writing code is becoming non-core. The core work is building the right thing, in the right way. And arguably it has always been that.
AI can help augment this core work as a brainstorming partner. But there’s a lot of context – how it fits into an org, who gets promoted with a purchase, the life of a user – that the AI can’t do yet. The core work is moving up, to system design, agent management, internal teamwork and spending more time with users to achieve real outcomes.
Rest assured, like chess, puzzle solver coders won’t die out. Tournaments will still exist. We will still be in awe of the IMO/IOI winners. In fact, I think interest in it will actually increase, similar to chess. There will just be fewer puzzle solvers at companies.
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My mom is a teacher. A lot of what she spends her time on is what I’d call non-core. It’s creating curriculums, grading, etc. AI can and should automate this work.
Her core work right now includes helping her students deeply learn about a topic. What’s interesting is that in the near term, even this may not be her core work. Your AI could help you learn in an even more personalized way.
Are teachers all going to disappear? Absolutely not.
When I think back to my favorite teachers and professors, it wasn’t necessarily the information they shared with me that was the most meaningful. I barely remember the content today.
Instead it was how they contextualized that information, how they made it relatable to my life, how they made me feel, and how they helped draw curiosities and spark new connections for me. Their core work was to use their subject matter as a vehicle to help me grow as a person.
That is not going to change.
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A lot of doomer takes assume that all core work will be automated. And then there will be nothing to do.
I strongly disagree with this.
First, as mentioned above, work tends to just move up one level. Farmers used to just farm. Now their core work is managing agents (aka tractors), hedging with futures, figuring out what to plant, etc. This will happen to all jobs across all industries.
Second, humans will just make up new jobs. We want social connection. Human desire is infinite and biologically innate.
Parth Chopra@pchopra28
@jeremygiffon @SP1NS1R as long human biological makeup doesn't change we will always have infinite cravings/desire. Including wanting to do something for fulfillment and we will make up jobs to serve that for ourselves and each other
8:18 PM · Feb 13, 2026 · 397 Views
1 Reply · 1 Repost · 1 Like
We’re in a rapidly changing world. Not dissimilar to the fog of war during the covid years. And so we need to re-invent how we do things.
This is a GOOD thing. Don’t fall into the AGI depression. It can and will be fun. And before we know it, we’ll wonder how we ever did things the old way.
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