A Human in the Middle | The IT Guy Show 022

Everyone’s bracing for AI to take their job. Karl Abbott has a more useful take: it didn’t replace his work, it changed how he works. Karl was my very first guest on the show, and he came back to dig into the article he wrote about exactly that.

A few things worth carrying away from this one:

• What AI actually removes. We got into the parts of knowledge work AI is genuinely good at taking off your plate, the drafting and the scaffolding, and why that is not the same as replacing you.
• Why being broadly read matters more now. Karl makes the case that judgment, taste, and narrative instinct are the human parts, and they get more valuable as the mechanical parts get automated.
• Vibe coding and higher ed. We talked about what “vibe coding” means for engineers and what schools need to teach when fluency can be generated but wisdom still cannot.

If AI has left you a little uneasy about where you fit, this conversation is a good place to think it through.