Would You Hire For This Role If AI Could Do The First Draft?
Shopify made headlines with a deceptively simple rule: No new hires unless AI has tried the job first. CEO Tobi Lütke framed it as a cultural shift, not just a financial one. Teams must prototype roles with AI before turning to headcount solutions. Employees are also evaluated on how well they integrate AI into their work. It’s a bold move, and it’s already sparking debate across the business world.
At one level, it’s a clever prompt: a speed bump to slow the hiring reflex and force clarity. But at another level, it raises deeper questions about what work really matters in the age of AI—and whether fear or creativity will guide our next steps.
From Bullshit Jobs To Meaningful Work
The late anthropologist David Graeber had a term for roles that persist despite appearing pointless even to the people doing them: bullshit jobs. Not just uninspiring jobs, but jobs that even their holders believe have no real value.
AI may not take your job, but it can help you find out which jobs aren’t worth doing. What’s intriguing about Shopify’s provocation is not whether AI can do the job. It’s whether the job is worth doing at all. That’s the real gift of an “AI-first pass.” It forces the question: Why does this role exist? What value does it create?
In that light, AI becomes a tool not of replacement but of adaptive transformation—creating space for work that’s meaningful, purposeful and distinctly human.
AI Can Start The Draft, But It Can’t Sign Off
Let’s be clear: AI can accelerate, prototype and clarify—but it still lacks the ability to own judgment. Even if AI can do 60% of the job, someone still needs to:
- Interpret the results in the full context of the work.
- Sense the risks and mitigate them.
- Spot the moral edge cases and make hard decisions about them.
- Be accountable for what happens next.
So, ironically, delegating a task to AI doesn’t eliminate the work—it redistributes it. If not designed well, that oversight can quietly increase the load on the very humans you’re trying to free.
This is why AI must remain a co-intelligent partner, not a scapegoat for tough org decisions. As Wharton professor Ethan Mollick points out, the most effective AI implementation comes when humans and machines collaborate rather than when either works alone. Delegation without discernment isn’t transformation—it’s abdication.
What Should Humans Do Now?
We often talk about the future of work as if the options are extinction or escape. But let’s pause and ask: When in history has there been no human work to do?
We are not running out of problems. We are not running out of purpose. We are simply in a transition—from roles shaped by routine to roles shaped by judgment, curiosity and context. The future of work isn’t something that happens to us. It’s something we actively shape—if we choose to.
A Better Prompt For Leaders
AI-first hiring should be less about gatekeeping jobs and more about reimagining what jobs are for. Here are a few better questions to ask:
What is the real value of this role—creatively, strategically or ethically?
If it’s just task completion, AI may be enough. But if the job is about sense-making, meaning-making or decision-making, that’s human work.
Could prototyping with AI sharpen our understanding—before we hire?
Sometimes a first pass by AI reveals ambiguity we didn’t know was there. That’s a feature, not a flaw.
Who is accountable for the output, and how will we support them?
If someone’s overseeing AI-generated work, that’s a job, too. Are we recognizing and resourcing it properly?
Ultimately, the questions we ask about AI will shape the answers we create together. In this technological transition, our greatest leverage isn’t in the algorithms, but in our distinctly human capacity to define what matters.
Don’t wait for the future of work to happen to you; actively shape a more meaningful one.