According to Fortune, executives from major enterprise companies like Salesforce and Autodesk spoke at the Brainstorm AI conference in San Francisco this week, arguing AI won’t automate creative jobs but will fundamentally change them. Nancy Xu, VP of AI at Salesforce, said workers will shift from being “producers” to “directors,” delegating goals to AI agents instead of executing tasks themselves. Autodesk’s Chief Customer Officer, Elisabeth Zornes, cited a project with EV maker Rivian where AI-powered design tools shaved about two years off their development cycle. Xu also predicted AI will have a massive near-term impact, taking the bottom 50% of performers in a role and bringing them into the top 50%. However, she noted the impact on top 10% “superstar” performers will be much less. The overall consensus was that AI will augment, not replace, creative workers, but the shift could reshape career ladders and workforce development.
From Producer to Director
Here’s the thing: this “director” framing is a brilliant piece of corporate messaging. It sounds empowering, right? Instead of doing the grunt work, you’re the visionary. But let’s be real. It’s a massive skillset shift. Being a great producer—closing that sale, designing that component—is not the same skill as being a great director who can clearly articulate goals, manage a fleet of semi-autonomous AI agents, and edit their output. Salesforce’s Xu basically said we spend our days now asking “how” to accomplish a goal. The future is asking “what” the goal should be. That’s a huge cognitive leap. And what happens to all the people who are brilliant at the “how” but struggle with the strategic “what”? That’s the unanswered question.
Raising The Floor And Ceiling
The most fascinating, and potentially divisive, comment came from Xu about performance. She said AI will largely boost the bottom 50% of performers into the top 50%. Think about that. It’s a massive compression of the middle. Mediocre salespeople and junior designers could suddenly produce work that looks, on the surface, comparable to solid veterans. But then she says the impact on the top 10% is “much less.” So what’s the incentive structure? If AI makes everyone *adequately* good, does exceptional human talent become even *more* valuable and expensive? Or does it get flattened? Autodesk’s Zornes talks about raising the ceiling for imagination, but the business reality might be that companies settle for “good enough” AI-assisted work from the middle of the pack.
The Hidden Workforce Crisis
Now, the executives acknowledged a thorny issue, but I think they’re underplaying it. If AI agents handle all the entry-level execution work—drafting emails, basic graphic layouts, initial customer service queries—what happens to the entry-level *jobs*? Those positions are traditionally where people learn the craft. You don’t become a great director without first being a producer. You learn by doing the work, making mistakes, and seeing what works. If that foundational layer is automated, how does the next generation build competence? The corporate structure has to change, as Accenture’s Ami Palan noted. But changing culture is harder than building the tech. You can have a Ferrari of an AI system, but if your people don’t know how to drive it—or, more critically, if they never learned the basics of the road—you’re going nowhere.
The Implementation Traffic Jam
Palan’s Ferrari metaphor is perfect. Everyone is racing to build the fastest, shiniest AI agent platform. But the real bottleneck won’t be the technology. It will be the organizational inertia, the legacy processes, and frankly, the fear. Managers used to evaluating based on hours worked or tasks completed will need to judge strategic vision. Creative teams used to hands-on tools will need to trust and manage opaque AI outputs. It’s a complete rewiring of work psychology. So, is the “director” future a promise or a euphemism? For some, it will be a genuine elevation. For others, it might feel like being promoted to supervisor of a robot that’s doing your old job. The transition, if it happens, will be messy, uneven, and full of surprises no conference panel can predict.
