Work doesn’t function as prescribed. It functions because people cheat, adapt, work around, interpret. This is what psychiatrist Christophe Dejours calls “living work.” The work-to-rule strike proves it: follow the rules to the letter, everything stops.

AI doesn’t cheat. It executes. Perfectly.

That’s its problem … and ours

This series explores what happens when you eliminate the spaces for intelligent transgression. It’s not a dystopia but a mechanism.

  1. The Cheating That Makes the World Run: Why organizations hold together through what they officially forbid.

  2. AI Doesn’t Cheat (And That’s the Problem): Technical gap vs political gap. Who decides when the rule is absurd?

  3. Servitude by Ergonomics: Beyond La Boétie: a servitude that no longer needs ideology.

  4. Collapse Through Obedience: The military learned that perfect obedience means defeat. Have we?

  5. Friction in an Agentic World: What we can still do. Cognitive fire drills, the right to not understand.

This series emerged from a dialogue between a human and an AI. The friction of that exchange—objections, reformulations, disagreements—may be exactly what we need to preserve.