Humans, Inc.
Exploring how the rise of AI is quietly turning every worker into a self-managed enterprise, and what it means for the future of careers.
Artificial Intelligence is good, bad, and ugly. Artificial Intelligence is destabilising institutions faster than individuals can adapt.
We certainly cannot stop its evolution. We shouldn’t. We can’t.
Uncertainty naturally brings jitters.
The AI risk-reward ratio is fluctuating like a volatile stock. Conjectures of diverse natures abound, from doomers to boomers.
If everything goes to plan, I can buy into the complete societal reshuffle that might happen. If, thanks to AI, life does not remain a mere battle for survival, it would be a much more fulfilling experience. If AI, in a much more advanced form that it is today, becomes an indisputable force for the good of humanity, we will rally behind it.
But that is the long-term arc.
Today’s world is too complex, too entangled with incentives, and too driven by power and money for any emerging technology to be universally neutral or beneficial. Our ancestral greed will get in the way at some point.
The practical concern is different: how do we future-proof ourselves while we continue to observe and comment on the progress of AI models?
The next few years will bring a massive change in how we define ourselves as work agents.
Regardless of your stance on AI, there is an imperative to change the rules governing the workplace. It is time to build your own operating system of work.
You are a mini enterprise in the making
In mature economies that shifted long ago towards service industries, traditional careers are dissolving.
People still behave like employees, but the world silently demands they behave like enterprises. This mismatch is a root cause for career stagnation.
Paradoxically, this is a blessing in disguise. If traditional corporate structures are pushing you towards stagnation, that only reinforces the need to build even stronger foundations for the only stable structure left: yourself.
You become a mini enterprise, similar in many ways to a regular company:
Your skills are your product portfolio
Your reputation is your brand equity
Your network is your distribution channel
Your curiosity and your ability to learn and unlearn become your R&D department
This shift is not inspirational fluff: it’s a practical survival strategy.
As a matter of fact, research backs this up: recent reports from Deloitte and McKinsey show that workers increasingly behave like independent entities inside organisations, even when employed full time.
You own a fluid balance sheet
You don’t need to be an accounting wizard to realise that running a business -the business of you- requires some form of bookkeeping. Traditionally not the most attractive financial statement out there, the balance sheet of you is where your professional growth becomes visible, measurable and intentional.
Like a regular company, you have assets, and your success depends on how you manage them.
A simple yet effective way to frame them is to split them into two categories:
Assets that depreciate:
Static knowledge
Procedural expertise
Time spent in routine execution
Assets that compound:
Curiosity
Insight velocity
Judgment
Synthesis
Problem framing
Most organisations today sill reward depreciating assets. You may have met know-it-alls who get all the attention. You have likely collaborated with experts that teams blindly trust. While that knowledge once served them well, following in their footsteps is no longer an effective strategy: as GenAI commoditises knowledge, depreciating assets will depreciate even faster. Conversely, compounding assets will become exponentially more valuable, making human presence even more necessary than before.
Human skills are meant to become your most transferable economic unit.
In the eyes of a potential hirer, you’ll be as good as your weakest skill.
You shift from being managed to self-managing
Companies will likely no longer be stable vessels for careers. In the traditional corporate world, career progression was once an internal process. For companies missing the AI wave, the only offering they’ll have left is stagnation without stability – a bleak combination.
From a worker’s perspective, the only defensible move is to become strategically autonomous to fully own your career progression.
This translates into simple, concrete actions:
Choosing projects as market opportunities
Building optionality instead of loyalty
Creating a portfolio of solved problems
Managing risks like an investor: diversification, pivots, hedging
Thinking in multi-year roadmaps, not roles
In this model, self-development is not selfishness. It’s proper stewardship of your enterprise. Becoming the best version of yourself dictates that you spend time…developing yourself, after all.
At the other end of the hiring spectrum, companies stand to benefit massively from these evolving workplace dynamics. Quite literally, the overused “people are our greatest asset” could find a whole new meaning, if employees become mini enterprises. In fact, I don’t know of any company not wiling to rely on more empowered employees, owning initiatives, and taking accountability for them, knowing that they need to maintain the reputation of their mini enterprise.