The zero value of average work

The economics of knowledge work are changing in ways that are easy to underestimate. Before AI, people understood that producing competent work at scale required time, specialized skills, and organizational infrastructure. This meant that work activities like writing articles or building functional software came with meaningful costs. LLMs have driven those costs down to practically zero. Now AI’s output is the new average and “competent” execution is abundant. When competent work is available at nearly zero cost, it provides little competitive advantage. We have seen versions of this value shift before: Cloud computing changed the skills required to manage infrastructure and GPS reduced the value of navigational skills. AI brought on a similar reset across a broader range of knowledge work. For CEOs, this raises an important question: When knowledge work becomes abundant and cheap, where does the value move? My industry, search marketing, offers an early look at the answer. Search historically required considerable execution across content production, keyword research, technical recommendations, reporting, and analysis. Those capabilities needed specialized people and processes, …