Commentary on "AI Middle"

This post is in response to a post by John Robb on Substack, "The AI Middle"

The “AI Middle” concept is useful, but it needs careful framing when discussed at leadership levels.

The core insight is sound: individuals and small teams building customized agents can dramatically increase productivity, responsiveness, and entrepreneurial leverage. The pellet stove example is not trivial. It represents a pattern: domain expertise amplified by highly personalized AI tooling.

This is not generic SaaS. It is agentic augmentation tightly coupled to human judgment.

However, leaders need to metabolize three structural realities if this is to become broadly beneficial rather than destabilizing.

1. Agents are cognitive multipliers, not replacements.The real gains come from human-agent symbiosis. Policy and strategy should reinforce that coupling rather than incentivize full labor substitution narratives. Framing matters. Superempowered individuals are more politically and socially sustainable than autonomous AI displacement.
2. Platform dependence is the hidden risk.If agent builders rely entirely on proprietary foundation models and centralized compute, empowerment is leased. Sustainable benefit requires portability, interoperability, and competitive access to AI infrastructure. Leaders should treat model access and data portability as strategic assets, not incidental features.
3. Consolidation will occur unless constrained.Technological leverage historically begins distributed and then consolidates. Without proactive governance, successful agent use cases will be absorbed into large platforms or regulated into compliance silos. Protecting the AI Middle requires antitrust vigilance and support for open ecosystems.

The opportunity is real. A new productivity layer can emerge. But it will not self-stabilize.

The correct mental model is not “AI will replace companies.” It is “individuals equipped with tailored AI can outperform rigid institutions.”

That distinction shifts the policy conversation from inevitability of demolition to design of empowerment.

If leaders approach this as infrastructure design rather than speculative hype, they can increase prosperity while reducing systemic shock.