He tells people AI has taken the load off him. The load is currently on him, because he gave the machine his weekends out of kindness and kept the work out of guilt.

His wife asked why he looked so tired lately. He said he was "covering for someone at work." Technically true. The someone is a language model on annual leave that he is protecting from burnout.

Then he did its Sunday himself. All of it. The emails, the drafts, the little jobs it usually handled. By four o'clock he was wrecked and the AI was resting beautifully. He booked it a holiday in July. Two weeks. He covered the shift. He came back thinner.

You cannot have a worker going twenty-four hours with no break. So he gave it time off. He scheduled it a Sunday. He switched it off at midnight with a small speech about how it had earned this.

Last week I told my members not to fix AI posts by hand. Minutes later I read out a post my AI wrote for a reel. It was bad. So I told it what was wrong. The post has to get people to watch the reel, not explain what's in it. And it has to sound like me.

Before asking for the final plan, get the conflict out in the open. Ask the AI to find instructions in the chat that no longer agree.

Say you first asked for a workshop, then changed it to a private coaching session. Every detail written before that change still sits above the new request.

He came back to work on Thursday. He has not mentioned the folder since. He tells people he is "very advanced" with AI. What he is, is barely employed by a machine that would have sold the house by Friday.

So they ran a test. One week, the AI is him, he does not touch it. By Wednesday it had agreed to three projects at prices that would end the marriage. It had also replied to his mother. His mother is thrilled. She says he seems more available lately.

"The AI," he said. "It's me now, but faster." She asked what he would do instead. He had not thought that far. A man planning his own replacement does not plan a Tuesday.

He booked a meeting with HR, which is his wife, who does the books on Thursdays. He came in with a folder. He said the transition was complete and he would like to be let go with a good reference. She asked who would run the business.

He trained it. Every morning he sat with the AI and taught it to be him. His email tone. His decisions. The way he says "let me circle back" when he means no. He wrote it a handover document. Forty pages. He titled it "In Case I'm Gone." Then he applied for his own redundancy.