In this blog, I explore the collision of AI-driven hyperproductivity and human-centered craftsmanship. I describe how Wide Productivity, powered by AI and capital, displaces mass labor while producing surplus goods at astonishing scale. Yet, alongside it, Narrow Productivity emerges—offering personal, local, and intentional value that massive enterprises cannot replicate. I reflect on how society will increasingly need both: one driving economic power, the other sustaining social and emotional coherence. The challenge, I realize, lies in how we assign value across these divergent systems as AI transforms labor, consumption, and meaning itself.
As artificial intelligence accelerates through the global economy, we are witnessing the violent compression of traditional labor markets. Hyperproductivity is eliminating millions of jobs across sectors that once required large armies of human effort. The rise of Wide Productivity — where individual effort is multiplied through capital, software, and AI agents — continues to redefine how companies operate, how value is created, and how wealth is concentrated.
But this is not a story of pure displacement. As Wide Productivity grows, something else is quietly emerging alongside it: Narrow Productivity.
In simple terms, Wide Productivity produces surplus. It creates the smartphones, electric cars, advanced medical devices, global logistics, and vast digital networks we all rely on. But as this system becomes more efficient, fewer humans are needed to operate it. Many will find themselves pushed out of these scaled enterprise machines — not because they are incapable, but because the system no longer requires their input at scale.
And yet, humans do not easily surrender the instinct to produce.
This is where Narrow Productivity begins to take shape. While it cannot compete with Wide Productivity on volume, scale, or capital efficiency, it thrives in dimensions that mass production often cannot reach: intimacy, locality, intentionality, care.
- The gardener who grows organic produce for a small group of families.
- The craftsman who hand-makes clothing, leather goods, or tools.
- The baker who produces bread for a neighborhood, not for a global distribution chain.
- The teacher who offers private, highly tailored instruction rather than mass online courses.
Narrow Productivity will become increasingly valued in two ways.
First, as counterbalance products — items that meet emotional, aesthetic, or health demands unsatisfied by industrial production. Healthier food, handmade goods, environmentally sensitive production, and locally sourced items will attract a growing segment of consumers who, despite enjoying the benefits of Wide Productivity, seek authenticity and intentionality in parts of their consumption.
Second, as supported work — where members of the Wide Productivity economy understand that many who cannot participate in scaled enterprises must still live meaningful lives. This will not be pure charity. It will often be hybrid models of patronage, local support, and embedded community economics. Those who prosper inside the hyperproductive economy will increasingly feel a moral, cultural, or even aesthetic obligation to support local craftsmen, farmers, artists, and small producers. This is not simply about money—it is about maintaining coherence in human society as AI reshapes the labor substrate.
The problem that will emerge, however, is valuation. How do we price the artifact of Narrow Productivity relative to the hyper-efficiency of Wide Productivity? A handmade shirt may take hours, even days, of labor. The industrial system can produce thousands per hour at a fraction of the cost. But they are not substitutes. The handmade object contains narrative, locality, personal care — attributes the industrial system cannot replicate. The question will not be whether one displaces the other, but how society assigns value across these increasingly divergent domains of production.
In many ways, Narrow Productivity is a return to something very old — the village artisan, the community farmer, the bespoke craftsman. But it arises now within a fully globalized, AI-enhanced economy where Wide Productivity handles nearly all essential mass production.
We are entering a bifurcated world. On one side, hyperproductive enterprises, lean and AI-driven, producing massive surplus with minimal labor. On the other, millions of smaller, human-scaled producers creating meaning, purpose, and intimate value for those willing to see it. Both are necessary. But only one will dominate the metrics of GDP, capital markets, and state power. The other will quietly sustain the fabric of human life.
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