What Will Knowledge Work Be In 18 Months? Look At What AI Is Doing To Coding Right Now.
Citrix, Thursday, February 19th, 2026
There's a lot of buzz about something big happening in software engineering thanks to the latest batch of AI models. However, most knowledge workers think this is just a 'coding thing' which doesn't apply to them. They're wrong.
Dan Shapiro, Glowforge CEO and Wharton Research Fellow, recently published a five-level framework which maps the level of AI assistance for coding from simple searches all the way to a 'dark factory,' where AI is essentially just a black box that turns specs into software.
I want to walk through those five levels, because I think this pattern also applies to knowledge work, and we knowledge workers are not far behind coders in this regard.