Sarah discovered Marcus was an AI when she suggested they meet for coffee.
For six months, their Slack exchanges had been sharp, their video calls productive, and his project insights consistently impressed clients. But when Sarah proposed an in-person meeting to discuss a sensitive client issue, Marcus deflected. When she pressed, he offered vague excuses about travel restrictions. It wasn't until the company's quarterly all-hands meeting—where Marcus was notably absent yet again—that HR quietly pulled Sarah aside.
Marcus didn't exist. He was an AI system so sophisticated that even Sarah, a seasoned marketing director, couldn't distinguish his digital presence from a human colleague.
Sarah spent the next week staring at her computer screen, wondering: If I couldn't tell Marcus was fake, what does that say about me? About my work? About everything I thought made me valuable?
Remote work has felt like liberation, and return-to-office (RTO) mandates look like a punishment more than a productivity move. But if you think about it a little deeper, that debate looks like a red herring. AI’s going to be a growing presence in remote work. Marcuses are already changing what happens in call centers. They’re certain to show up in a lot of other places.
Presence is a human trait. When we talk about things algos will never replace, presence is one of those things. People can (and perhaps should) work remote. But working remote is not the same as not being present. While everyone else optimizes for working from home, the savvy move is learning to show up.
What computers can't feel
Walk into any modern auto shop and you'll see computers everywhere. Mechanics plug scanners into every car, screens show error codes, software spots problems faster than any human.
But ask any mechanic with twenty years under the hood and they'll tell you: the computer says what's broken, not why it broke. A scanner might flag your transmission, but figuring out if it's bad parts, dirty fluid, or how you drive? That takes feeling how the engine responds, hearing changes in the sound, knowing a thousand small ways metal and oil work together.
This gap is growing, not shrinking. The better AI gets at reading patterns, the more valuable it becomes to actually touch things, hear things, feel things.
This isn't just happening in auto shops.
Same thing everywhere: AI reads medical scans better than doctors, but when someone's dying, families want a human to hold their hand and explain what's happening. Algorithms beat most stock pickers, but when markets crash, rich people still want to sit across from someone who can look them in the eye.
Everyone's moving the wrong way
David Epstein found something weird studying high performers: when everyone goes one direction, the smart money goes the other way. Everyone thinks you need to specialize early. The best performers usually don't.
Same thing's happening with remote work. While 95% of workers want flexibility and companies go "remote-first," something else is quietly happening.
Microsoft looked at 24,000 AI patents. The jobs most at risk? Not factory work. Knowledge work. The stuff remote workers do best: translation, research, writing, analysis. AI is getting scary good at exactly what work-from-home people do.
Meanwhile, jobs that require showing up are fine. Not just obvious ones like plumbing. Smart work that benefits from being there: negotiations where you read faces, crisis management where you feel the room, innovations that happen in hallway conversations.
Physical jobs aren't just safer. They're worth more. Research shows when customers buy expensive stuff in stores instead of online, they spend 20% more over their lifetime. Being there doesn't just protect you from AI—it makes you money.
What surgeons figured out
Dr. Axel Krieger at Johns Hopkins built a surgical robot that removes gallbladders better than most humans. The robot watches thousands of surgery videos, then operates with 100% accuracy.
This might terrify surgeons, but it shouldn’t. Instead, it's making them more valuable.
The robot nails technical stuff but needs humans for everything that matters: reading patient anxiety, handling weird complications, making judgment calls about risk. As one researcher put it, "AI helps surgeons decide better and execute better. It doesn't replace them."
Surgeons figured this out first. Use the robot for precision, trust your hands for everything else.
The doubter's case
Not everyone buys this. Nicholas Bloom at Stanford studied 16,000 workers and found hybrid employees are just as productive and promotable as office workers, with way better retention.
He's not wrong—yet. Forcing people into offices just to be there is stupid. But so is optimizing only for remote work.
When ATMs showed up in the 1970s, everyone thought bank tellers were doomed. Instead, teller jobs increased. ATMs handled boring transactions, so banks opened more branches and tellers did relationship stuff and problem-solving—work that needed humans there.
Tellers weren't fighting ATMs or trying to beat them. They used machines for routine stuff and focused on what only humans could do.
We're there again, just faster and across everything.
The consultant's discovery
Sam runs strategy consulting for big companies. Two years ago, everything was remote: Zoom interviews, laptop analysis, screen-share presentations. His work was efficient and forgettable.
Then he noticed something. His best projects all started the same way: walking around client offices for two days. Not for meetings. Just watching. How people talk at the coffee machine. Whose door stays shut. The tension when certain topics come up.
Sam keeps a photo on his desk from his first walking-the-halls discovery: a Post-it note he found in a client's bathroom that said "If Bob asks about the merger, act surprised." That Post-it saved a multimillion dollar deal.
That invisible stuff—impossible for AI to catch, impossible to see on video—shapes every recommendation he makes. His insights aren't just smarter; they actually work because he gets the human dynamics that decide whether change happens.
Sam uses AI for data and research and draft presentations. But his real value is being the bridge between what AI finds and what organizations can actually do. The machines tell him what the data says. Being there tells him what people can handle.
"I was trying to compete with machines at what they do best," he says. "Now I focus on what only humans can do. Turns out there's more of that than I expected."
Why your brain needs bodies
Scientists study what happens in your brain during face-to-face vs. video conversations. Different neural networks light up. Physical presence processes information richer and makes better decisions.
During lockdowns, researchers asked what people missed most. Not efficiency. Not productivity. Spontaneous conversations. Physical closeness. Getting away from screens. That's how humans build the trust that makes complex stuff work.
The better AI gets at copying human communication, the more authentic physical presence matters. Like how handwritten notes became more meaningful after email, not less.
When everyone goes digital, showing up becomes rare. Rare things cost more.
The closing window
We have 6-12 months before AI triggers massive job displacement in remote work. This doesn’t have to be a countdown to unemployment. It's time to position yourself.
Everyone's making the same mistake. They're getting better at the exact things AI is about to take over: digital communication, online collaboration, virtual presentations.
Smarter move: learn to use both. Let AI handle what it does best while you build the kind of presence that creates value no algorithm can touch.
Different for everyone: The consultant who uses AI for research but walks client offices to understand culture. The teacher who uses AI for personalized learning but runs classroom discussions that only work in person. The salesperson who automates lead generation but builds relationships over meals.
They all do the same thing: let AI handle the boring stuff, then show up where it matters.
What you do tomorrow
Pick one important work relationship that's gone fully digital. Text them right now. Suggest coffee this week.
At coffee, ask something you've never asked over video: "What worries you that you never mention in our calls?"
Listen. That conversation—impossible to have authentically over Zoom, impossible for AI to copy—is how your proximity premium starts.
Next week: Join one meeting in person that you'd normally Zoom into. Don't just participate. Watch. Notice what you pick up from body language, side conversations, room energy. That intelligence is invisible to algorithms.
Within a month: Find one part of your work that happens entirely digital. Ask yourself: What would I understand differently if I could physically experience this? Then figure out how.
We don’t have to make a choice between human and artificial intelligence. You can use AI for what machines do best while creating value through the kind of presence no algorithm can simulate.
When everyone goes digital, showing up becomes your secret weapon.
The future belongs to people who show up. Everything else is just typing.
We’re in the last dozen weeks or so of The Last Normal Year. If you’ve been waiting to see how all this shakes out, it’s shaking out. The jobs numbers are clear, as is the direction. You can absolutely thrive in this refactoring of work, but the thinking-about-it time has passed. This is a moment for clear action. If you want to know how to come out on top through these shifts, just hit “reply”. This can be your moment.