The Human Should Be More Than the Orchestration Layer
September 22, 2026 · Keith Pasley
GitLab CEO Bill Staples recently wrote that “the human has become the orchestration layer for the machines.”
That caught my attention because I think it describes where a lot of knowledge work is heading.
AI is getting better at doing the execution. It can write code, research a problem, analyze information, create content and increasingly complete multi-step tasks. As that improves, our role starts to change.
The value isn’t necessarily in doing every step ourselves. It’s in deciding what needs to be done, giving AI the right context, directing the work, reviewing what comes back and recognizing when something doesn’t look right.
But I think there’s an important distinction here.
If orchestration means giving AI a task and accepting whatever comes back, we’ve missed the point. Good orchestration requires judgment. You need to know what to delegate, what shouldn’t be delegated, when the answer is wrong and whether you’re willing to take responsibility for the result.
That’s also why I don’t think prompting will be the defining AI skill.
Judgment will be.
As AI gets better at execution, the human role should become more valuable, not less. We should be spending more of our time understanding the problem, making decisions and determining whether the work actually creates value.
AI can increasingly do the work.
The human still needs to decide what work should be done and whether the result should be trusted.
Technology doesn’t create business value. Better decisions