The Blast Radius · Free
Run the exercise on your own job.
In The Blast Radius I ran an exercise I heard from Cathie Wood: ask the AI what the new jobs in your world will be. I ran it on Claude for a B2B sales organization. It came back with eight titles. Then I ran a second round and told it I was skeptical. The eight boiled down to two real jobs, and when I asked how many people a 50-person team would need, it said about 10 to 15 and labeled that its own judgment, not data.
Here are both prompts, opened up so you can run them on your own function and your own industry. Fill in the brackets, paste round one into a fresh session, then paste round two into another fresh session with the eight titles it gave you. Nothing to sign up for.
Round one
Ask for the new jobs.
The question as Cathie Wood framed it. You will get eight tidy titles with a description of what each person does all day. Do not stop here.
I want you to consult with futurists, scientists, engineers, science fiction writers, economists, and strategists, and tell me what the new jobs inside [your function, for example: a B2B sales organization] in [your industry] will be by 2029, once AI agents do most of [the recurring work in your function, for example: prospecting, research, reporting, forecasting, and follow-up], and [the people you serve, for example: buyers] increasingly send their own AI agents to deal with you. I want job titles that mostly do not exist today. Give me 8 job titles. For each: the title, one sentence on what the person actually does all day, and one sentence on which of today's jobs it replaces or absorbs. Then name 3 of today's [your function] titles you think are gone by 2029, and why, in one line each. Plain language, no hype words, no em dashes.
Round two
Make it tell you which ones need a person.
The skeptic pass. For each title: what an agent can do today, what is left for a person, and whether that is left because the AI cannot do it yet or because someone has to answer for the result.
Earlier I asked for the new jobs inside [your function] in [your industry] by 2029, once AI agents do most of [the recurring work in your function], and [the people you serve] send their own AI agents to deal with you. I got the 8 titles below. I'm skeptical. I think I can point at every one of them and say an AI agent could handle most of it, even with today's top models. [Paste the 8 titles and their one-line descriptions from round one here.] Be honest with me, not reassuring. For each of the 8: (a) what part of this job an AI agent could do with today's top models, (b) what part is left for a person, if any, and (c) whether what's left is left because the AI can't do it yet (capability), or because someone has to answer for the result: sign it, own it, get fired for it (accountability). Say "nothing is left" where that is true. Then tell me: of the 8, how many are really full-time human jobs by 2029, and how many people would a [size of your team today, for example: 50]-person [your function] team today actually need for all of this? Then give me the one-line rule for which [your function] work stays human. Plain language, no hype words, no em dashes.
If round two surprises you the way it surprised me, the essay is where I work out what it means: read The Blast Radius. Every Tuesday I publish a newsletter on Substack, in plain words, from inside the businesses I run.