The Future of Humanity Is in Management

AI won’t replace management; it will enhance it. The future belongs to those who use AI to expand decision-making, not automate it. The best leaders will be AI-augmented, not AI-replaced.

People assume AI will replace human labor. They imagine a world where software runs companies, robots build products, and everything hums along automatically. But that’s not how technological revolutions actually work. New technologies don’t just replace human work; they expand human agency. And AI, perhaps more than any technology before it, will make the role of management more important, not less.

At first, this seems counterintuitive. After all, isn't AI supposed to automate decision-making? If machines can make better choices than people, why do we need managers at all? But this view misunderstands both the nature of management and the true power of AI. Management isn't just about making decisions; it's about knowing which decisions matter, adapting to uncertainty, and leading people. AI can provide better tools, but it doesn’t replace the need for leadership.

Management: The Bottleneck of Progress

Most people think of management as a necessary evil—a layer of bureaucracy that exists to keep things from falling apart. In reality, management is the constraint on most human progress. The industrial revolution didn’t just happen because we invented machines; it happened because we figured out how to organize factories, supply chains, and labor at scale. The same was true for computing. The real impact of the microchip wasn’t just that it made computation cheaper, but that it made entirely new kinds of companies and industries possible.

Consider the difference between two types of companies in the early days of the internet. Some businesses simply took existing models—like selling books or renting movies—and moved them online. Others, like Google and Amazon, created entirely new structures that couldn't have existed before. The biggest bottleneck was never the technology itself but figuring out how to organize people and resources around it.

That’s the real opportunity of AI. AI won’t just make businesses more efficient; it will change the way we think about management itself. The limiting factor in most organizations isn’t capital or labor—it’s the ability to make good decisions at scale. AI, if used correctly, can dramatically expand that capacity.

AI as a Force Multiplier for Human Agency

Every major technological shift has increased the need for management, not reduced it. The steam engine required factory managers. The telephone enabled corporations to expand across geographies, requiring more coordination. The internet created a wave of new businesses, but also forced leaders to rethink how teams communicate and work remotely. AI will be no different. It will give people access to more information, faster feedback loops, and smarter automation—but all of these things require judgment. The better the tools, the more valuable the people who know how to use them.

Think of a chess grandmaster using an AI-powered assistant. The best players today aren’t just humans or just machines, but humans using machines intelligently. The same will be true in business. AI will provide insights, but it will still take human managers to know which moves to make.

One of AI’s biggest contributions to management will be in reducing cognitive overload. Today, managers are bombarded with emails, dashboards, and reports, most of which they barely have time to process. AI will act as a filter, surfacing only the most important information and even suggesting potential actions. In a way, this is an extension of what software has always done—reducing friction and making complex tasks easier—but AI will do it at an entirely new level.

Imagine a CEO who no longer has to spend hours in meetings or reading reports. Instead, they have an AI assistant that synthesizes vast amounts of data into a few key insights, allowing them to focus purely on strategy. In this world, the best leaders won’t be the ones who can memorize the most numbers, but the ones who ask the best questions.

What Happens When AI Does the Managing?

Of course, if AI can assist managers, why not let it manage entirely? In theory, an AI could make better decisions than a human CEO. It could analyze more data, run more simulations, and act without ego or bias. Some companies will experiment with this. We might see algorithmic management, AI-driven strategy, even autonomous companies that function with minimal human intervention.

But management isn’t just about making rational decisions. It’s about navigating ambiguity, dealing with incomplete information, and persuading people to act. AI might optimize supply chains and pricing models, but can it inspire a team? Can it navigate office politics? Can it make a bet on an idea that seems irrational at first but turns out to be right? Good management is not just about logic; it’s about intuition, storytelling, and leadership. AI can assist with these things, but it’s unlikely to replace them.

History suggests that purely algorithmic management has its limits. Consider the way high-frequency trading transformed financial markets. At first, AI-driven strategies seemed unstoppable. But as more firms adopted them, markets became increasingly fragile, prone to flash crashes and unexpected anomalies. The same could happen in business. If every company optimizes for the same AI-driven efficiency, they may all become vulnerable in the same way. The advantage, as always, will go to those who can think differently.

The Risk of Over-Automation

There’s also a danger in automating too much. AI is great at pattern recognition, but it can’t anticipate the unknown. Over-reliance on AI could make organizations brittle—efficient in the short term but vulnerable to unexpected changes. Imagine a company where every decision is made by algorithms. It might work well when things are predictable, but what happens when the world shifts in a way the AI wasn’t trained for?

Consider a classic case: Kodak. In the late 20th century, Kodak had some of the best engineers and a dominant position in the photography market. But it failed to see the rise of digital photography, even though it had invented the first digital camera. The problem wasn’t lack of data; it was a failure of judgment. No AI, no matter how advanced, would have automatically decided to pivot Kodak’s entire business model. That kind of decision requires vision, risk-taking, and a willingness to challenge assumptions—things that, for now, only humans can do.

The best organizations won’t just plug AI into their existing structures. They’ll rethink management entirely. Instead of rigid hierarchies, we might see more fluid, decentralized organizations where AI handles routine decisions and humans focus on strategy, creativity, and judgment. The best managers will be those who know when to trust the machine and when to override it.

The Real Future of Management

The future of work isn’t AI replacing management—it’s AI making management more powerful. The real winners in this transition won’t be the companies that automate the most, but the ones that figure out how to combine AI with human leadership. Just as the best chess players today are not humans or AI alone, but humans using AI as a tool, the best managers of the future will be those who know how to harness AI to expand their own judgment and decision-making ability.

Technology doesn’t eliminate the need for human agency. It increases it. The more powerful our tools become, the more important it is to have people who know how to use them. AI will change management, but it won’t replace it. If anything, it will make it the most important job of all.