Humans + AI teaming, Diyi Yang on levels of human agency, tasks to ecosystems, E-Storming, and more

December 01, 2025

“These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people.” - Ilya Sustekever

Capability development for Humans + AI teams

I believe that Humans + AI Teaming (level 2 in my Levels of Humans + AI in Organizations framework) will be at the heart of the next phase of value creation for AI in the enterprise. Going beyond individual augmentation to amplify team performance.

We are early in process of building a set of courses to help leaders and participants in Humans + AI teams to excel.

We are early in the research phase, and are looking for learning and operational leaders who are open to doing a research interview on what they think would be useful to support superior team performance with AI. I’d be happy to join the call to share my early thinking and framing. If that might be you or a colleague, please get in touch!

Be well!

Ross

 

📖In this issue

  • Framework: From Tasks to Ecosystems

  • Humans + AI update: GenAI in VC, Humans + AI collaborative workshops for chain-of-thought, GenAI impact on productivity.

  • From Humans + AI Explorers Community: E-Stprming for augmentation, personal goals process with AI, and resetting your thinking.

  • Humans + AI Podcast: Diyi Yang on augmenting capabilities and wellbeing, levels of human agency, AI in the scientific process, and the ideation-execution gap.

💡Framework: From Tasks to Ecosystems

So much of thinking about the future of work is highly reductionist, focused on unbundling jobs into tasks and applying AI to highly specific use cases.

This 2×2 aims to reframe this. One key dimension is work design, moving from thinking about work as a bundle of tasks, through to work as solving problems and seizing opportunities as they evolve and emerge. The other is from single case tool use to true multi agent (humans + AI) systems.

These kinds of frames are critical for informing how we create what will inevitably be a very different future of work.

🧠🤖Humans + AI

GenAI and a Humans + AI future of venture capital

"venture capitalists told us that AI is now involved—as a core capability or a feature—in virtually every tech investment they consider. But it’s also changing the way VC firms do their work."

Collaborative workshops for Humans + AI chain-of-thought

A very interesting new paper proposes a "Collaborative Workshop" approach for Humans + AI work and thinking means, allowing humans to participate in the AI's thinking processes in extended chain-of-thought processes such as deep research..

GenAI appears to have increased “productivity” by 1.9%

New data from Fed Reserve St Louis on GenAI adoption suggests that 1.89% of labor productivity over the last three years could be attributed to GenAI. However that is based just on “time saved”, which is likely a fraction of the value created.

🌐From Humans + AI Explorers Community

Lots going on in the Humans + AI Explorers Community.

An extraordinary thread started by Beth Kanter on E-Storming: AI-Augmentation Design Challenge drew out some deep reflections and practices.

Elisabeth Montgomery shared that even the most advanced systems fall apart when cultural readiness isn’t there — from DEI gaps to neurodiversity blind spots.

And far more, with a host of upcoming events!

🎙️This week’s podcast episode

Diyi Yang on augmenting capabilities and wellbeing, levels of human agency, AI in the scientific process, and the ideation-execution gap  

Why you should listen

Diyi Yang is a rising star at Stanford University, where she has an intensely human focus in what is already a very human-centered AI institution. Her recent work has had a substantial impact on thinking on AI in work, we discuss all this and more in a marvellous conversation.

Thanks for reading!

Ross Dawson and team