AI can make more work possible. It cannot decide what a good working life should ask of us.
In his recent talk at Google DeepMind, Tyler Cowen offers a different way of thinking about life with powerful AI. He imagines a demanding period of institutional rebuilding, in which opportunity and responsibility multiply before any promised leisure arrives.
I am less interested in predicting that future than in the leadership question it raises. What happens when our capacity to act expands faster than our ability to decide what deserves action?
A tool saves two hours. There are already three plausible uses for them. Another piece of analysis becomes possible. A previously impractical project comes within reach. The diary fills again.
The efficiency may be real. So may the increase in demand.
The benchmark moves
Investment professionals will recognise something in this. Performance is visible, measured and compared. A strong absolute result can feel disappointing against a stronger benchmark. The work is judged partly against what somebody else has managed to do.
New capabilities can create a similar pressure. Yesterday's exceptional output becomes today's reasonable expectation. Being able to produce more does not necessarily leave us feeling that we have done enough.
There is a distinction worth holding here. Learning to use a useful tool is sensible. Treating every new capability as a personal obligation is a choice, even when competition makes that choice uncomfortable.
A leader needs to examine both. What does the business actually require? What am I doing because I am afraid of appearing behind?
What happens to the expert?
For people whose authority has rested on expertise, changing tools can raise a more personal question. If part of what I do becomes quicker, cheaper or more widely available, where does my contribution now sit?
There is a temptation to answer with more activity. Learn every tool. Review every output. Stay close enough to everything to remain indispensable.
That can be an expensive way to reassure yourself.
Consider a portfolio manager who becomes responsible for developing analysts. Continuing to improve every model personally might protect the quality of this week's work. It might also prevent anyone else from learning to exercise judgement. What feels like diligence can become a constraint on the team.
The leadership task includes deciding which responsibilities to retain, which to share, and where to let another person's approach differ from your own.
A pause with a purpose
This is one place coaching can be useful. A conversation can make a familiar response available for examination: the reflex to take work back, to answer immediately, to say yes before considering the cost.
The point is to connect reflection with a live decision. What are we trying to achieve? Whose expectations have become the benchmark? What would I stop doing if I trusted the team? Which conversation am I replacing with another piece of analysis?
Those questions do not remove the pressure. They can help distinguish the pressure inherent in a role from the pressure we add through habit, comparison or an unexamined idea of what a good leader does.
Nor is every overload a matter for individual reflection. Sometimes the workload is unreasonable, the mandate unclear or the organisation rewarding the wrong things. A useful conversation should make those conditions easier to name. A fuller diary is not always evidence of personal failure.
More capacity gives us more possibilities. Someone still has to choose among them, explain the trade-offs and accept what will remain undone.
I would like us to give that part of leadership as much attention as we give the tools.
Rebecca Lewis
Starting point: Tyler Cowen, Human Life in a Post-AGI World, talk at Google DeepMind, 8 July 2026. The reflections on leadership and coaching here are my own.
Deciding what deserves your attention is one focus of my executive coaching for senior leaders. Where the question concerns the wider team, investment-team advisory examines decision ownership, challenge and the development of investment talent.