What Separates a Mason From an Architect?
I tend to split working people into two groups: the ones who lay bricks -- masons -- and the ones who design the building -- architects. Until now, most office workers have been masons. Taking a blueprint someone else drew and repeating it filled up most of the day.
The seat where the blueprint gets drawn has always belonged to a few. Deciding what to build was tied to the dev team or a particular department, while everyone else stayed busy faithfully executing a fixed procedure. For a long time this arrangement was treated as an unchangeable given.
How Does AI Change This Arrangement?
AI changes this arrangement. Now anyone can become the designer of their own system. Instead of asking the dev team for the tool they need, an employee builds it themselves with an MCP tool, and a small-business owner publishes content in a single click. Work that once had to be requested from the dev team is now designed by the person themselves, in natural language.
This way of assembling a system in natural language is what people commonly call vibe coding. It is the moment someone who only read and followed the blueprint becomes someone who draws it, and I see this as the biggest change AI has brought to the workplace.
So What Is the Real Goal of AX?
That is why I say the real goal of AX is not some automation percentage. An automation figure is only part of the result; it can never be the purpose itself. The real goal is for every single person in an organization to rise from mason to architect.
When one person becomes an architect, they design their own work; when an entire organization becomes architects, the company begins to redesign itself. So this is the question I want to leave you with: how many architects does your organization have right now?