The New Problems AI Is Creating (And How People Are Solving Them)
August 16, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readThe New Problems AI Is Creating (And How People Are Solving Them)
Last year, the AI conversation was stuck on whether this technology would matter at all. Now, after a rapid shift into the agentic era, companies face a very different set of questions—not about whether to adopt AI, but about how to manage the new problems that adoption creates. The organizations that are succeeding are those that have stopped asking "which model should we use?" and started grappling with harder challenges: rising token costs, AI slop flooding internal communications, the erosion of critical thinking skills, and the need to redesign work around decisions rather than tasks.
The Productivity Myth and the Real Cost of Tokens
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What you'll learn
- 1 Timestamped Outline
- 2 (00:03) **Introduction: The Shift in AI Conversations** - The host sets up how AI discourse has evolved over the past year, from skepticism to active problem-solving around agentic AI's new challenges.
- 3 (03:12) **Misconception #1: AI Will Immediately Generate a Productivity Boom** - EY's analysis is used to argue that productivity gains from AI are jagged and take time, contrary to popular expectation.
- 4 (05:35) **Misconception #2: AI Is Nearly Free** - The host explains how agentic AI transforms cost structures from fixed subscriptions to variable operating expenses tied to token consumption.
- 5 (09:11) **Misconception #3: AI Will Make Labor Redundant** - The host dismisses this as a false problem, calling it a convenient excuse for layoffs rather than a genuine AI-driven outcome.
- 6 (10:27) **The AI Slop Problem and Company Writing Policies** - The host examines how organizations are responding to the flood of low-quality AI-generated content with new norms and policies.
- 7 (13:27) **Social and Professional Norms as Solutions** - The host argues that norms adapt quickly, and sharing best practices publicly accelerates organizational learning across the industry.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
AI is solving old problems while creating entirely new ones. NLW looks at how people and companies are responding to AI slop, rising token costs, uneven productivity, workforce deskilling, and the long-term challenge of preserving human expertise.
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