- Essays··8 min read
China's Bank-AI Push Forgot the Middle
China's largest banks are automating the base of their workforce — branch tellers, credit clerks, back-office processors — while importing senior AI PhDs for the apex and eliminating the middle tier entirely. A Hangzhou court ruling in April 2026 drew the first legal line against pure AI substitution; the more serious reckoning arrives when the next credit cycle exposes the judgement gap left by the hollowing. The reskilling pathway that would close it does not yet exist.
china-bankingai-workforcelabour-marketsfinancial-servicesRead - Essays··8 min read
Cutting the apprentices to pay for the autopilot
Profitable firms are cutting staff to fund AI capex they cannot yet show pays off — and freezing the junior hiring that manufactures expertise. Cutting the apprentices to fund the autopilot looks brilliant on a deck and ruinous in a decade.
ai-and-labourdeskillingreskillingtech-layoffsRead - Essays··8 min read
The owners are right. That's the part nobody wants to sit with.
The owners are directionally right that they can run with far fewer people. They are very often wrong about which people, how fast, and what it costs to get there. Those two things are the whole story.
ai-and-labourworkforce-displacemententerprise-aiautomation-economicsRead