This Labor Day, I am thinking not only about the future of work, but about the enduring value of the human worker.
We are entering an era where AI will automate tasks, compress time, and give individuals capabilities that once required entire teams.
But companies are not built by models. They are built by people: founders who take the risk before anyone else believes in it, employees who turn an idea into a product, frontline workers who keep our economy moving, and teams whose judgment, resilience, creativity, and empathy cannot be reduced to an algorithm.
The future of work is not humans versus AI. It is humans with AI.
I call this Collaborative Intelligence. AI provides leverage, but people provide purpose, judgment, and direction.
As leaders, our responsibility is not simply to deploy AI. It is to ensure that people participate in the opportunity it creates:
Most investors define ROI as return on investment. I have always defined it as Rise of the Individual. By that measure, the promise of AI should be more people doing more meaningful work and achieving things that were previously impossible.
This Labor Day, my gratitude goes to the builders, the dreamers, the caregivers, the creators, the operators, and the workers whose efforts move society forward. Happy Labor Day to all of them.
Technology will keep changing how we work. People will always determine why the work matters.
