Reframing the future of work

Why this conversation

Every team that brings in AI tools has to bring the people along too, and that is rarely a technical problem. Gertrude Chilufya hosts Let’s Reframe Tech, a podcast about the future of work and its impact on business and on human beings, because, as she puts it, we still need humans in the AI era. The host met her at the Nordic APIs Platform Summit in Stockholm on 14 October. The story of the week is in Nordic APIs 2026: your next customer is an agent.

Hype, skills and an 80-20 balance

She does not claim to know what the future of work will look like. What she does know is that the best thing people can do for themselves is get the right skills, so that whatever happens, and much of it is out of their control, they can keep working and keep the economy running as it should.

Asked whether universal income could be a viable answer to AI, she does not think it would be the solution in the end. She thinks in terms of balance, and the balance does not have to be 50-50. She sees it more as 80-20, where the 20 is the human: the person still owns the context, the results and the control of the final stages, with generative AI and the rest of AI somewhere in the middle.

The fear behind the hype

There is a lot that is good in the hype, but she dislikes the fear it brings out, especially in people who are not very technical. AI is communicated as something that is coming for them, and the part where it can empower them, and all of us, gets lost: “we could be 10x of ourselves” with these tools. Tell people it is coming after them and they resist.

So when she works on AI adoption, she starts with why people are struggling, and addresses that before the technology comes in. She names three causes. The first is fear of the unknown. The second is the sense of losing control: handing part of your work to AI feels like giving up your knowledge, and then what is left for you to do? The third is irritation among people who have adopted and use agents a lot, who end up feeling they manage agents rather than do their work: “now I’m just babysitting”. They cannot be creative or use the experience they built over years.

The host recognised the pattern from his own diary: more creative with time and space, less so when the day is filled with urgent things and constant context-switching.

Fewer people, more agents, more skills

What will the organisation of tomorrow look like? It could go either way, she says, but she expects fewer people inside organisations as more agentic ways of working come in. That does not mean people will be out of work. She sees the nature of work changing: fewer people employed full time, and more contractors and hourly workers who come in when needed. That is where specialist skills matter. If you are specialised in orchestrating agentic workflows, you come in, fix it and leave, without being tied to one place.

The host raised the term skill-based economy, and she agreed: people need to be more specialised and more flexible, working by project and moving in and out. For the shape of those skills she uses the classic T: broad knowledge of a field, such as AI, and depth in one area, such as security or orchestration.

On burnout, which the host had heard about from open source maintainers the week before, she says it differs from person to person. But the people who feel they have become babysitters of agents also describe burnout, because of the cognitive load of being constantly on.

Where to find her

LinkedIn is the easiest place to find her. Let’s Reframe Tech is available wherever you get your podcasts, with new episodes starting in early December.