Draft an important email without using AI. Write it from scratch — no suggestions, no autocomplete, and no prompt to ChatGPT to compose or revise the email.
Now ask yourself: Did it feel slower? Harder? Slightly uncomfortable?
For many of us, AI tools have quietly become part of how we think at work. And that raises a question we are not asking often enough: What happens if those tools aren’t there?
Nearly half of employees report using AI tools at work, despit explicit bans by their employers, according to a recent survey by security company Anagram: a striking reminder that organizational policies and technological practice are already out of sync. When policies lag behind practice, or tools spread informally, it raises a deeper question about AI’s role in work — now and in the future.
For the past two years, the future of work has been told as a single story: AI is here, it is transformative, and workplaces must adapt or fall behind. Companies are reorienting and reorganizing teams around it. Job descriptions now quietly assume fluency with generative tools. Productivity expectations are rising accordingly.
Yet even as AI becomes embedded in everyday work, permanent access to these tools is far from guaranteed. That uncertainty is already surfacing at the policy level. In a recent move, the Trump administration ordered government agencies to stop using AI systems from the company Anthropic amid disputes over how such technologies should be used in federal operations. The episode highlights how access to AI tools can quickly become entangled in legal, political, and institutional battles. To comply with federal directives, other organizations may soon follow suit.
But here’s a question almost no one is asking: What if AI isn’t always there?
What if AI becomes too expensive? Too legally risky? Too privacy-invasive? What if regulations tighten? What if a major data breach or liability case forces organizations to scale back? What if public institutions, schools, healthcare systems or government agencies prohibit it?
We are spending enormous energy preparing for an AI-augmented future. We are spending almost none preparing for the possibility that AI might not be reliably embedded in our workplaces.
History suggests that technological change rarely follows a straight, upward line.
Remote work after COVID is an example. At one point, fully remote work seemed like the inevitable future. Yet as organizations experimented, many converged on hybrid models that balanced flexibility with coordination and culture.
AI may follow a similar path. Today’s dominant narrative assumes continuous integration and growth with AI. But rising costs, sustainability concerns, legal uncertainty and public debate could slow or redirect this trajectory. Organizations may overcorrect after incidents, restrict use, and access may become uneven.
Recent lawsuits underscore that risk. Amazon has faced legal action over allegations that workplace monitoring tools intruded on worker privacy — highlighting how digital oversight technologies can quickly become flashpoints for legal and ethical scrutiny. If AI-driven systems blur the line between productivity support and surveillance, regulatory and reputational consequences could reshape how widely they are deployed.
There is another issue lurking beneath the surface: de-skilling.
AI tools are increasingly capable of drafting emails, summarizing documents, generating code, synthesizing research, and even recommending decisions. They feel like frictionless assistants. And they are genuinely useful.
But decades ago, researchers studying automation warned of the “ironies of automation.” When systems fail, humans are suddenly expected to intervene — without having maintained the underlying expertise.
Our recent research identified this AI-as-Amplifier Paradox: AI’s dual role as an enhancer and an eroder, simultaneously strengthening performance while eroding underlying expertise. We found how we may be entering an era of gradual, almost invisible deskilling. In other words, AI may boost performance in the moment, but may quietly weaken the skills underneath. We are getting better at using AI at work, while losing the muscle memory of critical thinking and independent reasoning. This is an asymptomatic AI harm. It does not announce itself. We will likely only realize it when the AI is not available.
If AI disappeared tomorrow, how many organizations could still perform at the same level of rigor and judgment?
To be sure, AI offers real and measurable benefits. The question is whether we are building ecosystems that depend on it — or ecosystems that remain resilient without it.
Public debate often frames the future in extremes: either we embrace AI everywhere, or we resist it. But that binary misses a more plausible middle path.
Instead of asking whether work should be AI-augmented or AI-free, we should be asking whether it is AI-resilient.
An AI-resilient workplace thrives with AI but does not collapse without it. AI enhances work, but does not become a single point of failure. Human expertise is cultivated continuously, not quietly outsourced. Organizations can scale back AI without destabilizing workflows.
This is not anti-technology. It is an institutional and societal responsibility.
There is also an equity dimension. Access to AI is not evenly distributed. Professional licenses are expensive, and costs are already trending upward, while free tiers are becoming more limited — or disappearing altogether. Privacy-sensitive industries restrict usage. Public institutions face compliance barriers. Some organizations ban AI outright. If productivity standards quietly assume AI assistance, but access is uneven, we risk creating a new fault line: workers who are AI-augmented and workers who are not.
AI tools could become a form of workplace privilege rather than shared infrastructure.
If we design our workplaces under the assumption that AI will always be cheap, accessible, and legally uncomplicated, we risk building brittle systems — systems that require constant AI support to function.
We need to rethink building workplaces that can thrive with AI — and continue functioning without it.
Dr. Koustuv Saha is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s (UIUC) Siebel School of Computing and Data Science and is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project. He studies how online technologies and AI shape and reveal human behaviors and wellbeing.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.