We Automated Everything With AI and Tripled Our Headcount

We Automated Everything With AI and Tripled Our Headcount

From AI and I by Dan Shipper

May 27, 2026 · 41 min

About this episode

Dan Shipper discusses the paradox of AI automation increasing the demand for human work with Brandon Gell.

Dan Shipper runs one of the most AI-native companies today. Every has agents embedded in nearly every workflow—“if you swing a stick in our Slack, you're as likely to hit a human as an agent,” he says. And yet the company has grown from four people to 30 since GPT-3 came out, and is still hiring. Why does Dan believe there's more human work to do than ever? In a format flip for AI & I, Every's COO Brandon Gell turns the tables and interviews Dan about his latest essay, “After Automation”—an 8,000-word argument for why rising automation doesn't eliminate demand for human work, it increases it. The thesis: AI makes yesterday's expert competence cheap and widely available, which floods every field with output that's close but not quite right—and that creates more demand for the humans who can take it the rest of the way. Dan talked with Brandon about the paradox at the heart of agent-native work: The more AI can do, the more humans are needed to direct it, refine its output, and decide what matters next. If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share! To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe Follow him on X…

People in this episode

Host: Dan Shipper

Guest: Brandon Gell

Topics covered

  • AI automation
  • human work
  • technology growth
  • agent-native work
  • workforce expansion
  • AI impact on jobs

Keywords

  • AI
  • automation
  • human work
  • technology
  • workforce
  • GPT-3
  • Every
  • Brandon Gell

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Every, GPT-3, Slack

Books & works: After Automation

More episodes of AI and I

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the AI and I podcast page.