What is in the book

1. I HOW WE GOT HERE

   You’ve lived through this before. So did your granny.

   • Introduction. The Rising Tide This book is the argument, lived out loud.
   • 1 Chapter 1. The Internet’s Child We applauded the internet without asking hard questions. We’re doing it again.
   • 2 Chapter 2. Jobs Don’t Disappear They transform. The in-between is the bit we’re muddling our way through now.
   • 3 Chapter 3. The New Industrial Revolution Last time it came for our muscles. This time it’s coming for our minds.

2. II KNOW THE MACHINE

   What AI is, what it actually does, and where it goes wrong.

   • 4 Chapter 4. Jobs Reassemble Your job is a bundle of tasks wearing a name badge, and the bundle is being retied.
   • 5 Chapter 5. What AI is Brilliant At Nine years of chaos, sorted before the kettle boiled. Credit where it’s due.
   • 6 Chapter 6. The Invisible Line When execution is cheap, the premium is the named human who owns the outcome.
   • 7 Chapter 7. The Flattening I had a politically incorrect name for model collapse before I knew it was a thing.
   • 8 Chapter 8. The Water Downstream Everything you publish ends up in the water so you’d best make it worth drinking.
   • 9 Chapter 9. The Data You Hand Over The prompt box feels private. It isn’t, and what’s in it often isn’t only yours.
   • 10 Chapter 10. Mo Had Done the Math The cloud is a building, the building is in somebody’s town, and someone has to pay the water bill.
   • 11 Chapter 11. The Freeze Why learn anything, when the skill you built in June is a free button by July?
   • 12 Chapter 12. You Can’t Code A Soul The machine never has to live with what it’s done.

3. III THE FOUR SOUL SKILLS

   Four skills the machine can imitate right up until it counts.

   • 14 Chapter 14. Trust People remember who came back.
   • 15 Chapter 15. Judgement Wrong arrives in exactly the same tone as right.
   • 16 Chapter 16. Taste The itch arrives before the evidence.
   • 17 Chapter 17. Courage The skill that makes the other three actually count for anything.

4. IV THE FOUR IN MOTION

   What the machine cannot carry.

   • 18 Chapter 18. The Update Ceiling AI keeps improving, so why should the four Soul Skills be out of reach for it?
   • 19 Chapter 19. Commitment: Showing Up Showing up after the interesting part is over.
   • 20 Chapter 20. Empathy: Being Met What it means to be met by something that will not remember you in the morning.
   • 21 Chapter 21. Presence: It’s What They Travel On Attendance can be recorded; presence has to happen.
   • 22 Chapter 22. Timing: Judging ‘When’ A human who has lived experience develops a physical sense of ‘when’.

5. V THE GREAT SQUEEZE

   What’s getting harder, and what the Soul Skills can and can’t fix.

   • 23 Chapter 23. The Floor Keeps Rising Good enough is now instant, so guess where everyone’s standing.
   • 24 Chapter 24. The Missing Rung The first job taught you everything, and it’s the first job to go.
   • 25 Chapter 25. The Intelligence Curse The question sits one level above your desk: who ends up owning the machines?
   • 26 Chapter 26. The Risk Above the Risk Whether the thing stays steerable is a real question.
   • 27 Chapter 27. The Trust Economy When output is cheap, the only currency left is whether people actually believe you.
   • 28 Chapter 28. You Don’t Compete With AI Nobody wins an arm-wrestle with a calculator. Pick a different sport.