[FOR INTERNAL REVIEW] Daniel Rock - What Automation Means for How We Organize Jobs

ECON OF WORK - Private feed for review · Jun 3, 2026 · 41m

What actually happens to a job when AI touches it? The answer depends on something most frameworks aren't designed to measure.

In this episode, Ben sits down with Daniel Rock, assistant professor at Penn and co-founder of Work Helix, to dig into AI exposure.

Topics covered:

What "AI exposure" actually measures

Why tasks are "assemblages," not atoms, and what that means for how we think about job change

The task chaining paper: why the sequence in which tasks are automated matters as much as which tasks get automated

Why the handoff costs of breaking work into steps also have handoff benefits…