The bottleneck AI can't fix

Artificial intelligence (AI) keeps getting faster, but work doesn't feel any easier.

That gap is the real story, and it starts with a question most offices rarely consider: faster at what, exactly?

Eliyahu Goldratt tackled a similar question in his 1984 business book, "The Goal." His main idea, which he called the theory of constraints, is straightforward.

Every system moves only as fast as its slowest part.

If you improve everything except that slow point, the whole system still moves at the same speed.

The improvements are real but the results don't change.

Goldratt explained using this example: A product goes through framing, roofing and wiring.

Roofing is the slowest step.

If you add more framers or give them better tools, the framing pile just grows faster than the roofers can keep up with.

The total output doesn't increase.

Today, offices are doing something similar but with software instead of framers.

AI writes emails, makes slides and summarizes meetings.

But these tasks were rarely the slowest part.

The real bottleneck has always been judgment — deciding whether to trust a n