Individuals and small teams can now generate decisions, options, and initiatives faster than existing organizations were designed to legitimize, coordinate, or absorb. The bottleneck has shifted from execution to governance.
When surplus productive capacity accumulates without an absorption layer, organizations don’t gradually adapt. Historically, they freeze: tighter rules, centralization, bans, decoupling.
We saw a similar reflex during COVID: when systems couldn’t absorb shock locally, they shut down globally.
What seems under-discussed is absorption: not "how fast can we produce" but how many decisions, options, and changes an organization can metabolize without defensive closure.
Two mechanisms seem relevant but under-theorized: (1) small, local process changes that redistribute coordination and decision load; (2) continuous skill and role shifts, as people reposition around what still needs to be decided, maintained, and legitimized.
I’ve been trying to think about this as a kind of "conduction" problem, how human decision-making and legitimacy flow alongside generations, AI and people.
If you’ve seen organizations handle this well (or fail badly), I’d be curious: what actually lets systems absorb AI-driven over-efficiency without reverting to control, ranking, layoffs or shutdown?
skeam•1w ago
Interestingly, human society is also a system that has been hugely impacted by sudden innovations increasing the production efficiency, each leading to an observable redistribution of power.
So, will the best performing companies 10 years forward be the ones flattening hierarchy as much as possible?
eriam•1w ago
Now I don't see how flattening hierarchy could cure this. Decisions must still be taken for example for utilities and any other complex system and people must work so we need role shifts and we need process changes effective and apparent for organizations otherwise thay won't benefit and suffer from the shock.
The analogy with COVID was also a kind of what if: could we have an economic confinement if efficiency gains are collapsing the economy ?
skeam•1w ago
But it does not remove the horizontal coordination that high-stakes changes require (legal, finance, security, etc), so in a sense I agree, it doesn't totally cure decision making DDoS, but it helps.
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The COVID analogy is interesting, so your assumption is that companies will struggle to make profit because they'll operate changes to handle over-efficiency and these would lead to high financial losses?
eriam•1w ago
So I wonder could decisions be taken by officials to block layoffs in a kind of economic lockdown (similar to covid) to give time to adapt. Like "everybody freeze" we need people working no matter how fast things can move with AI because we fail to adapt as fast as the efficiency gains. Thats science fiction.
And also what about, from a worker's pov, all these efficiency gains. More time for myself or for the company, if companies fails to harvest these workforce pools its both a failure for the company and the worker.