(10-12 min. 2,474 words)

Written by Brad Zirulnik.

𝐀 sthenic prelude and heterodox heuristic for achieving in silico escape velocity.

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Leveler’s most non-consensus opinion is that the world is underestimating its need for a plan to replace human work with universal basic jobs.

The “Future of Work" and skills revolution are dead.

To create universal, abundant jobs, we should reject the skill-premium complex and embrace AI.

This manifesto is not so much about the end of ‘work’ as about the evolution of ‘jobs.’

I try to express that I am right and it is time to chart a new path.

A frontier model for the achievement of Automatronic Jobs escapes velocity!

To me, the concept of a ‘job' is not immutable.

It is a dynamic, ever-changing construct that can be liberated, manipulated, and grown by AI.

Why, then, should we not have abundant jobs and AI simultaneously?

It seems evident to me that we should, could, and would.

A job is, perhaps, after all, nothing more than a construct.

A construct that only AI can liberate, manipulate, or grow – not just destroy.

Said differently, for every job, there won't be someone available, but for every person in the world, there is a job to be/get done.

AI plays the leading role in job creation, illuminating and unlocking new levels of agency.

It reassures us that AI can redirect skills downstream instead of destroying jobs and eventually converge into Human-Automatic Jobs (HAJs).

If we want to ‘up-skill’ people at scale as democratically as possible, we should create jobs for them to do.

It requires us to accelerate AI in human capital.

Ascertaining any skills people need and inventing the jobs they will do is the most logical approach.

It's a call to action to adapt to the changing landscape of work and embrace the potential of AI in job creation.

How then?

I created Leveler AI, an Algorithm Protocol (AP) for advancing the adoption, implementation, and deployment (A-I-D) of “Human-Automatronic Jobs.”

Also known as “Synthetics”, automatrons, or in silico.

I don't see Automatronic jobs as a future concept but as a right-now reality.

A reality that can be accelerated through more AI in human capital—bringing Automatrons to people and companies everywhere!

Through my AP such as Anatomic-fit, Subject To Change, Açaí Palm, PivotTechnic, ChromaticTalent AGI, Automatrons have arrived—replacing ossified, top-down future of work schematics.

I. Talent (Attention) is all You need

As artificial intelligence changes the work economy, it radically alters the nature of jobs, dismantling conventional norms and preconceptions of talent and the mass allocation of human capital.

The Skills-Based Commercial Complex (SBCC) is a clear example of an industry highly vulnerable to rapid change. AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), challenges its reliance on traditional skills as the foundation of work. Warnings often frame this disruption by claiming that AI will render human jobs obsolete and displace millions of workers. The SBCC human capital domain will never be the same again. I know this because I have followed, analyzed, and worked in it for over two decades as a practitioner and technology provider.

In the new techno-hierarchy, while skill at doing anything remains crucial in Automatronama, the location and significance of competency and adjacent taxonomies is uncertain at best. This upheaval delivers an earth-shock to institutionalized skills-first cultures and the hiring technology platforms that support them, rendering them less relevant in this charged-up, 2025 and beyond human capital reallocation event!

As AI turns labor into software, skills-first frameworks will no longer dictate how we prepare for and perform work—at least not in their conventional, traditional, or 'future of work' sense.

Unlike the pre-AI era, when skills flowed downstream to jobs, the post-AI landscape inverts this dynamic: Jobs now 'flip' upstream of skills, with skills getting redirected downstream and eventually converging into Human-Automatic Jobs (HAJs), or Automatrons.

VECTOR

The rapid brute force rate of technological maturation in human capital unlocks a vector ”step function in new capabilities and products” (Elad Gil), automatically bolstering the magnitude of Automatrons and collective shift into Talent AGI(more on this later). Through Leveler technology, I believe that Automatrons is not only not a threat but also a pathway toward eradicating the skills gap and talent shortage by inventing a billion jobs to be done by 2040. This manifesto aims to shepherd the arrival and more profound acceleration of the Automatronama, “Sconoverse,” and Human-Automatronic Jobs wave.

Let’s begin.

II. ‘Sputnik Moment’

Increasing the GDP of Jobs

The street finds its uses for things, they say. At the crossroads of labor dynamics and technocapitalism: the Integer Talent (chromatic talent AGI) and Automatronic Jobs race—a pivotal moment akin to "Apollo 11" or the "Manhattan Project" in American Dynamism. This sublime, quiet, profound human capital event and techno-renaissance demands intellectual rigor and resolve. It compels us to rethink human capital through the lens of automatronic jobs, harnessing this transformative energy to reshape our economic future. This is the path to accelerating artificial intelligence's exponential rise with deliberate, actionable technology, where the code writes itself, and humans are the empathetic protocol wizards optimized for jobs to do/be done.

Narrative Change into Greatness

Transformations as profound as the Automatronic stage require a fundamental shift in understanding their civilizational impact. This intellectual journey led to my initial exploration and subsequent discovery of Automatrons. To embrace this new era, I propose a radical migration of eight billion plus Talent Ontology Integers into human-automatronic job architectures—a heterodox heuristic and plan for achieving automatronic escape velocity!

The system is burning, and we are rewriting its core protocols.

For reasons I will discuss later, this shift partly hinges on dismantling the outdated reliance on skills orthodoxies (AKA: Skills Premium) and commercially centralized talent thought leadership paradigms that no longer serve a post-AI world. It also comes with deconstructing the binary latency/atrophy of most mainstream HR tech—from global HRIS to workforce management systems. Although once heralded as solutions to global talent shortages, these tools have run their pre-AI course and have become firewalls blocking human-techno evolutionary capitalism at scale. To move forward, we must reimagine the SBCC’s faulty base assumptions that hold us back, cutting through the incumbent SaaS tech “stack” with laser-guided Human-Automatronic jobs precision focus.

Into Automatronama

Breakthroughs in Generative AI, frontier Large Language Models, infinite context windows, task automation APIs, reasoning, agentic workflows, autonomous agents, and AGI are more than tech breakthroughs; they are human-augmentation AI symbiosis integrators (SiMS). They are successors to modern constructs of knowledge work, replacing vast swathes of desk work, rote tasks, and work-from-home requisites. Depending on your motives or incentives, SiMS renders obsolete (or at least radically reconstruct) misaligned skills-based rendered taxonomies. It is no trivial matter, and Automatronic job modalities are no joke! As such, it has allowed me to confront one of the most persistent myths in labor economics: the enduring Skills Myth. By addressing this misconception from first principles, we can accelerate our journey toward Automatronic jobs faster.

III. The anadromous computing and commuting layer

Salmon, against all expectations, swim upstream during their anadromous migration to spawn. While most fish move with the current, salmon leap against it, driven by nature's unwavering intention to return home. This seemingly counterintuitive journey is both challenging and essential, as it revitalizes life and maintains the delicate balance of their ecosystem. It is a testament to resilience, purpose, and the remarkable logic of nature's design.

Skills Inversion Paneling: Unlike the the pre-AI economy, skills now flow downstream from jobs

• Pre-AI: Skills → Jobs (skills determine and shape jobs)

In a skills-based economy, human skills and capabilities predominantly shape jobs within predefined frameworks. Individuals acquire or possess the requisite skills and competencies necessary to qualify for or excel in specific roles—positioning skills upstream of jobs.

These skills flow downward into predefined job functions, shaping much of the job design around human capabilities or what people can learn through training.

• Post-AI: Jobs → Skills (AI creates/defines jobs, skills must adapt)

In a post-AI economy, human skills shift downstream, secondary to AI's capability to invent, redefine, and augment jobs. This reorientation allows AI to design roles that demand new skills or reimagine existing ones. Over time, skills begin to flow upstream, much like salmon navigating their anadromous migration to spawn. While some jobs will remain downstream as a legacy of pre-AI norms, the relationship between employment and skills has fundamentally changed—jobs are now shaped by AI first, with skills adapting to meet these evolving demands.

Like salmon returning to spawn, skills now flow upstream to meet jobs at their source. In this paradigm, jobs serve as the "native ecosystem" where skills naturally regenerate, adapt, and flourish in response to AI-driven opportunities.

IV. Percept Ascent

The shift from skills upstream to downstream in the post-AI era produces both forgiving and unforgiving effects, particularly within the emerging Human-automatronic jobs (i.e., 'Synthetiks') environment. The 'JAZ' breakthrough—Jobs Automation Zeitgeist—represents a fundamental inversion of labor market dynamics, where AI systems now shape job creation rather than human capabilities defining roles. Like Jackson Pollock's revolutionary shift from vertical easels to horizontal canvases, which transformed artistic production, the current techno-capital LLM revolution inverts traditional labor hierarchies. This inversion manifests in two directions: AI augments human cognitive labor while enabling synthetic cognition to direct human execution at scale. The result is a new labor paradigm where jobs flow downstream to meet evolving skill sets rather than skills-determining job design upstream.

This 'flipped script' catalyzes a dual transformation: while some traditional skills become rapidly obsolete, new hybrid capabilities emerge at the intersection of human adaptability and AI systems. The Synthetiks riptide represents this convergence, where human workers navigate an AI-defined job landscape like salmon swimming upstream to spawn in their native waters.

In February 2022 (my early AI mainstream adoption phase), I experienced a metaphysical percept ascent—a pivotal moment of ontological transformation in which synthetic/automatronic jobs emerged not as a mere technological substitution but as an extension and re-imagination of human work.

The LLMs function as cognitive prisms, refracting analytical and theoretical capabilities with a speed and precision that transcends traditional skill taxonomies.

The Human-Automatronic Jobs wave represents an economic disruption and a philosophical migration—fundamentally recalibrating how intelligence manifests itself and how we generate value.

Just as Krasner recognized the revolutionary potential in laying canvases flat, challenging the vertical paradigms of artistic production, so does the JAZ breakthrough challenge our inherited models of skill, labor, and creative agency.

Upstream skills dissolve and reconstitute downstream, creating a fluid ecosystem where human and synthetic capabilities are no longer binary, but symbiotic and multiply-articulated. The transformative significance of Human-Automatronic Jobs has yet to be widely recognized similarly, redefining the boundaries of expression (jobs) and technique (skills).

However, many still cling to a pre-AI mindset, particularly in HR technology. A deep-rooted "skills-first" bias stifles transformative progress, even as the sector expands.

HR technology generated a $38 billion global economic footprint in 2023, and analysts project it will surpass $40 billion in 2024.

Yet this massive total addressable market remains chained to legacy systems and outdated frameworks. The real opportunity lies not in perpetuating the Future of Work culture but in redirecting these resources toward Automatron research and development.

We can dismantle the persistent Skills Myth—the flawed belief that skills must always precede jobs—by reorienting toward a jobs-first, skills-downstream framework. This shift isn't merely semantic; it's foundational, enabling AI to reshape roles and eliminate the skills-gap narrative once and for all.

The resistance to adopting a jobs-first economy rejects its vast economic potential. Traditional "skills-upstream" thinking blocks us from realizing the transformative power of Automatrons and reconfiguring human capital. This stubborn adherence maintains a stagnant monoculture prioritizing existing competencies over genuine progress.

In an AI-led economy, everything flows downstream from jobs. By reversing the traditional pyramid—placing jobs upstream and skills downstream—we unlock the gateway to universal, abundant Automatronic Jobs.

This shift represents a decisive move to eliminate the Skills Myth and "talent shortages" while catalyzing AI's exponential growth across stagnant HR-tech markets.

While it may seem contrarian to challenge skills as the cornerstone of human capital, survival depends on this heterodox heuristic. Moving beyond the outdated skills-first mindset, we pave the way for Automatrons—unlocking AI's full potential and achieving escape velocity toward an entirely new job ecosystem and universal work.

Arcadian fortifications and advancing artificial intelligence through automatronic-jobs

Unlike many predict, the future will bring more jobs, not fewer. Changes in work will create more jobs for people to do. All jobs now and in the second wave of industrialization will be “Human-Automatronic Jobs” and all people — Integer talent, or talent Integers. Alas, brand new human and job ontologies were created and accelerated by AI! As with every Renaissance or ‘golden age’ period, new work and jobs emerge for people, not less. This particular technological renaissance we are in is no different.

In the dawning era of artificial intelligence, all human capital has sprung into intellectual capital—a transformation where skills flow into ontologically sourced, integer talent capital markets and jobs-based economies of scale.

This development marks a profound reversal from the pre-AI era when skills merely flowed downstream into jobs. Now, the jobs we do transcend the skills we possess, particularly in these early phases of transformation.

While some may bristle at this notion, it simply reflects the undeniable reality of the LLM vibe shift and AI future of work takeover: work has become fundamentally about the Jobs People Do, liberating us from the skills-first commercial complex.

Integrating AI into human capital—superseding traditional skills-first thinking—is one key to unlocking human agency. It is the harbinger of full-scale Automatrons, though widespread reluctance to embrace this reversal threatens to impede its promise.

We need a new skills orthodoxy where competencies emerge organically from evolving job roles, marking our collective rite of passage toward Universal (Basic) AI jobs possible or complete.

Enter Synthetiks—the next evolution of universal basic jobs—representing a macro reclassification and reorientation of work in the human-automatronic age.

We have entered the Automatronic race to the Sconoverse—our generation's Apollo 11, New Deal, Marshal Plan, and Operation Warp Speed combined into a singular . . post-singularity moment. The year 2025 has become, and already is, iconospheric, iconoclastic, and technospheric.

This mission extends beyond individual advancement to helping others achieve Automatronic positions. It demands we evangelize the imminent arrival of the "Sconoverse" while using our constitution to shepherd and advance the ontology, values, and ideals of "synthetiks".

Success lies in catalyzing millions of synthetic job categories, each enriched with autonomous and distributed human agency constructs.

In this new paradigm, responsibility and control flow through decentralized channels, powered by Imbued Vocation Agents (IVAs) and Distributed Agent Frames (DAFs)—the source code and substrate for talent equanimity, which I will discuss more later. It represents our vision of human capital nirvana, illuminating the path toward a widespread revival and renewal of techno-capitalist jobs.

Leveler stands as both beacon and catalyst—a think tank and hyperstitious sconoverse—anticipating and shaping an unprecedented human capital unbundling and reallocation event.

Through this transformation, we unlock distributed agency vectors in perfect synchronicity with Synthetiks, ushering in the age of universal automatonic jobs. The future isn't approaching—it's unfolding before us, and we stand ready to shape its course.

This manifesto is a heterodox heuristic for achieving Automatronic escape velocity.

Brad Zirulnik September 7, 2024