AI is eating workflows, not jobs (yet)
How the best products are using AI to delete effort, not people
Everyone’s scared of AI taking their job. But let’s be honest, AI is way too busy right now rewriting emails, summarizing meetings, generating pitch decks, and helping people avoid talking to their coworkers.
What’s actually happening isn’t mass unemployment. It’s something quieter and more structural: AI is replacing steps, not roles. It’s trimming the fat in workflows. It’s deleting friction, not deleting people.
(Translation: AI is your intern now. And it doesn’t ask for coffee breaks.)
The best AI-powered products aren’t faster versions of old ones. They’re simpler ones. And they work not by doing more, but by making users do less.
AI isn’t replacing people. It’s replacing processes.
Let’s start with the data.
In 2023, McKinsey & Company published a comprehensive report on AI and the future of work. One key stat stood out: generative AI could automate 60 to 70 percent of employee time, especially in white-collar, knowledge-based roles.
But here’s the nuance: it’s not that AI will take entire jobs. It will take over tasks within jobs.
In marketing roles, 28% of work time is automatable with today’s generative AI tools.
In customer operations, that number climbs to up to 64%.
Developers using tools like GitHub Copilot report being 35–40% faster at writing common code.
In a 2024 Accenture study, 72% of high-growth companies said they’re actively redesigning operations using generative AI, not to reduce headcount, but to eliminate repetitive workflows and boost speed.
This isn’t about layoffs. It’s about skipping steps. This isn’t "AI vs people." It’s "AI vs the annoying parts of your day."
Good products aren’t using AI to show off. They’re using AI to kill workflows.
Let’s talk product. Because the shift is not just about automation, it’s about product design itself.
The early wave of “AI features” in tools was mostly noise. Everyone added a chatbot. Everyone added a magic button. Most of them added steps, not value.
But the smartest products are using AI to disappear work.
Here’s what good looks like:
Notion AI doesn't just help you write, it helps you start. No more blinking cursor anxiety.
Descript lets you edit podcasts like Google Docs. You delete a word; it edits the audio. Witchcraft.
Figma’s AI plugin can generate design variations in one click. No more duplicating frames like it’s 2019.
Superhuman turns long emails into short responses (and unread counts into peace of mind).
Canva’s background remover took what used to be a design chore and made it a button.
Linear quietly autocompletes tasks and writes update messages for you. No PM tears needed.
None of these feel like “AI features.” They feel like someone quietly deleted the boring stuff.
This is something Steve Jobs understood long before AI was on the scene:
“Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”
AI, when done right, is the cleanest thinking we’ve seen in years.
PM tip: if your AI feature still needs a whole onboarding flow and a video tutorial, it’s not killing a workflow, it’s actually adding one.
What this means for builders
Here’s the shift.
As product folks, we were trained to map journeys, reduce friction, and make things smoother. But what now?
Your job isn’t just to improve the flow. It’s to ask: should this flow exist at all?
You need to:
Rethink onboarding: if AI gets the user to value faster, cut the fluff.
Question every step: is this needed, or can AI just handle it?
Build trust: people don’t want AI that feels like magic. They want it to feel like a helpful teammate who doesn’t mess up the file names.
Bonus challenge: Make it feel so seamless that the user forgets AI was ever involved.
What this means practically:
Your onboarding flow might shrink to one screen. Or none.
Your forms might auto-fill based on context and past behavior.
Your UI might collapse. Why show 10 filters when the model already knows what I want?
And most importantly: your user’s mental load should drop. AI shouldn't make people feel like they're co-piloting a spaceship. It should feel like they have a very competent assistant who just handled it.
The job is safe. The grind is not.
Here’s the thing: most of us weren’t paid for the steps. We were paid for the outcome of those steps.
AI is just finding smarter, faster ways to get there.
This isn’t about doing more. It’s about removing the stuff that never needed to be done by a human in the first place.
So, no, the job’s not going away. But the late-night PowerPoint edits? The click-heavy UI? The status updates written just to prove progress?
Gone.
And honestly, good riddance.
As a PM, this means shifting your own thinking too:
Stop designing for tasks. Design for outcomes.
Build feedback loops that give users control without complexity.
Invest in real product intuition: if a user doesn’t need to do it, they shouldn’t even see it.
What we’re entering is a new era of product thinking. One where the most-loved features are the ones users barely notice.
Because they never had to ask for them. They just worked.
Final thought
AI isn’t the villain. It’s not stealing your job. It’s just quietly killing the little annoyances that stole your time.
And if you’re building in this space, whether you’re automating a step, removing a flow, or rethinking how humans and machines collaborate, I’d love to hear how you’re doing it.
Because this isn’t just a trend. It’s an inflection point.
And the best products won’t just talk about AI. They’ll make users forget there was ever work to begin with.