Allison Pugh
@allisonpugh.bsky.social
Care, Tech, Culture, Inequality. Check out The Last Human Job re the "scaling up" of humane work @PrincetonUPress. Johns Hopkins sociologist
Thinking about connection in South Korea: "Connecting people may be humanity’s last job. Volunteering has quietly carried out that work longer and more widely than almost any other civic practice." #TheLastHumanJob www.koreajoongangdaily.com/opinion/conn...
After #TheLastHumanJob was translated in Taiwan this year, a grad student in the Netherlands made a video about it, and...it went viral? Thank you to that student! (Audio is in English, for those who don't read Chinese...) youtu.be/8J0FZ3HxEJ8
10年內毀滅人類，AI已失控！？ 學者：人類最後的工作，將會是這個！ 🌟2025年美國社會學會傑出著作獎
YouTube video by 超級歪 SuperY
youtu.be
After #TheLastHumanJob was translated in Taiwan this year, a grad student in the Netherlands made a video about it, and...it went viral? Thank you to that student! (Audio is in English, for those who don't read Chinese...) youtu.be/8J0FZ3HxEJ8
10年內毀滅人類，AI已失控！？ 學者：人類最後的工作，將會是這個！ 🌟2025年美國社會學會傑出著作獎
YouTube video by 超級歪 SuperY
youtu.be
Looking forward to going to Louisville, Kentucky to speak at the 6th Annual Good Business Summit on Oct 29! We'll talk about human work in the AI century, and how leaders can protect real connection as AI changes how we work. If you can join us, Canopy is offering 15% off with code GOODBIZ2026.
An inspired full throated defense of writing as a human activity, made poorer when we invite AI to the party. Fantastic Model Behavior: George Saunders on.substack.com/p/model-beha...
Model Behavior: George Saunders
“Of course, if AI can cure cancer, bravo. I’m all for it. But even with cancer cured, death will still arrive somehow.”
on.substack.com
Is this what @allisonpugh.bsky.social meant by “better than nothing solutions?” Maybe we can move beyond this false paradigm of austerity and actually, idk, fund essential government services? Nobody wants an ai chatbot public defender, be so for real. -face palm & deep sigh-
The Conversation U.S.@us.theconversation.com · 2w agoAI-powered legal tools are filling gaps in civil legal services where the U.S. legal system has failed. theconversation.com/ai-tools-can...
Honored to give the Irving Bluestone Lecture on Workplace Issues at Wayne State University. Human connective labor is worth preserving, and we'll need to get organized to do it. Thanks to Labor@Wayne for the invite, and the engaged audience!
This week at IPK: @monasloane.bsky.social discusses her new book, Predicted: How AI Is Restructuring Social Life, with @allisonpugh.bsky.social and @cmcilwain.bsky.social.
But we don't have to surrender to that. We can keep nurturing our relationships and our communities (and our families ffs) and it is ever more meaningful to do so.
@jessgrose.bsky.social, as usual, on target. "It feels as if our educational leaders have abdicated their responsibility to students, teachers, parents and society by allowing Big Tech to more or less dictate national policy on screens in public schools."
Opinion | The Scandinavian Solution to A.I. in Schools (Gift Article)
Every minute of delay in regulating A.I. use in schools is another opportunity for Big Tech to fill the vacuum.
nytimes.com
It's really looking like AI-free classrooms will be for students at "elite" or "top" schools.
Anna Kornbluh@annakornbluh.bsky.social · 2mo agocognitive sabotage, you can ban it extra credit to U Chicago for bans on professional AND undergrad programs; smart SLACs are going to market AI free campuses soon chicagomaroon.com/53262/news/s...
Even if it is "just a tool" (It's not just a tool), AI allows bad actors to ruin things. (Criminals can hit you over the head with a hammer). Company Offering ‘100% Human-Written, Never AI’ Medical Research Is Entirely AI www.404media.co/company-offe...
Company Offering ‘100% Human-Written, Never AI’ Medical Research Is Entirely AI
Research Gold's team of human methodologists are either AI generated or using the identity of real people without their permission
404media.co
The sociologist Dr @allisonpugh.bsky.social in my view, makes the case for where we should look for remedy in her book "The Last Human Job": professions of connection, where the relationship between the professional and the client is critical to the outcome (second-order cybernetics, anyone?).
A terrific play by play of today's session on #TheLastHumanJob. What a wonderful, inspiring, humane ritual that these author meets critics sessions are. I'm floored and honored by the comments
Per Engzell@pengzell.bsky.social · 2mo agoAnother day another book forum #ASA2026. This time @allisonpugh.bsky.social's The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World. www.allisonpugh.com/the-last-hum...
My favorite part is where she mentions sociology's "obsession with inequality.". Isn't that like criticizing history for its obsession with the past? Sociology does lots of things well but one of the things it does best is decoding inequality, particularly useful in our second Gilded Age
Lisa Wade@lisawade.bsky.social · 3mo agoSociology is amazing. Our biggest problem is bad-faith actors who maliciously spurn the field because we teach people how societies work and they'd rather we all stay in the dark. Not today, Satan!
Everyone's talking about did they steal Apple secrets, but the news is OpenAI's making an AI companion for us to use in our homes, sold as "a computer built for AI to help busy people be more productive." But these are automated friends & we'll see a social cost. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
OpenAI’s First Device Will Be Movable, Screenless Speaker Built as AI Companion
OpenAI’s much-anticipated push into consumer devices is slated to begin with a mobile, screen-free smart speaker designed to be a new type of home computer for the AI era, according to people familiar...
bloomberg.com
Business start-ups up 35% in 18 months? Could be a positive outcome from GenAI, which definitely makes that easier... Projected Business Formations Within Four Quarters: Professional Services in the United States fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BFPBF...
Projected Business Formations Within Four Quarters: Professional Services in the United States
Projected Business Formations Within Four Quarters: Professional Services in the United States
fred.stlouisfed.org
I completely agree about @allisonpugh.bsky.social and The Last Human Job. It presents important, lasting principles for our times. Great book. We reviewed it at the link below. upriverpress.substack.com/p/the-datafi...
The Datafication of People
Upriver Press Book Review
upriverpress.substack.com
@allisonpugh.bsky.social's The Last Human Job is featured in Moe Carrick’s piece for @fastcompany.com: “Pugh’s research. . . [is] about what it costs, to both parties, when someone is seen versus processed. AI will not save your culture. The people leader who knows her people will."
The work AI can't do
Companies are investing millions in AI-powered people analytics while starving the human relationships that keep top talent engaged.
fastcompany.com
It's amazing what you can do when you remember that schools have a primary responsibility to the children they teach and nurture -- not to the ed-tech industry or gen AI profit margins.
Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4mo agoBut I was told it was inevitable.
Wow! "Pugh’s research was never really only about physicians and chaplains. It was about what it costs, to both parties, when someone is seen versus processed. AI will not save your culture. The people leader who knows her people will." www.fastcompany.com/91557933/the...
fastcompany.com
This is an incredibly depressing that reveals how AI is already being used to replace humans in home care. But it also reveals how willing many are to sacrifice privacy and human connection for a false sense of control.
My Father Wants to Age in Place. AI Will Be Watching
Devices that monitor seniors for safety are appealing to worried loved ones and underresourced home care agencies.
wired.com
Topol is great but it takes him a while to get here: "Frankly, over-adherence to guidelines may presage loss of the art of medicine, not taking in the human factor of each patient & the human-to-human bond...the foundation of the patient-doctor relationship." erictopol.substack.com/p/agentic-ai...
Agentic AI Comes to Medicine
Expansion of Capabilities With Two New Medical AI Models
erictopol.substack.com
"Both men believe that in a few years many medical services, especially primary care, will be conducted entirely by stand-alone AI." Especially primary care! The domain where relationship matters most! How will bots motivate humans? Or offer them dignity? www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Inside the Trump-backed push to bring AI doctors into American medicine
The administration is laying the groundwork for chatbots that can diagnose illness and prescribe medicine, but physicians say AI can introduce more problems.
washingtonpost.com
Great to see @allisonpugh.bsky.social's The Last Human Job reviewed by @theceme.bsky.social, where Stephanie MacGillivray calls it "...a masterpiece in the art of connective labour, at times technically challenging, other times deeply moving.” Read more:
'The Last Human Job' by Allison Pugh - Centre for Enterprise Markets and Ethics | CEME
A CEME review by Stephanie MacGillivray of The Last Human Job by Allison Pugh, on connective labour, human relationships and the limits of automation.
theceme.org
