Most “AI is changing the workplace” content comes from people who already believe it. Sherry Wolfe’s version is more useful because she didn’t, until recently.
Asked what technology will have the biggest impact on the workplace over the next three years, she didn’t reach for AI right away. “Well, a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have said this, but I’m going to say it today.” She’s been in payroll for decades and describes herself as not particularly familiar with AI — “it’s really hard for me to answer it” — but she’s landed on it anyway, based on conversations she’d had recently rather than anything she’d read or been sold on.
That’s worth sitting with. The shift didn’t come from a vendor pitch. It came from hearing other people talk through what AI actually does for them, in specific terms, until the abstraction turned into something she could picture using: reporting, self-audits, the parts of payroll that are repetitive and error-prone.
Michael Berman, working in a mission-driven organization where the actual work — supporting children and families — can’t be automated, framed it the same way from a different angle: AI won’t replace what his staff does, but it can absorb the busywork around it. He connected this to something Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said about separating tasks from purpose: the tasks get automated, the purpose doesn’t, and that’s the point. “The individual tasks still have to be completed, but also the purpose of completing those tasks still remain important at the same time. But it’s been a lot easier to complete them.”
Peter uses AI daily, on the administrative side — scheduling, email, quoting, paperwork — and is unambiguous about the payoff: “I get back hours of my life.”
None of these are AI evangelists. They’re three practical people who use it because it removes friction from parts of the job that were never the point of the job. That’s a more credible pitch than most AI marketing manages.
