A New Era for Knowledge Work
How AI is Reshaping the Way Work Gets Done
Kristina Qualben - Applied Data Scientist at Thread AI
Bryant Lewis - Operations Strategist at Thread AI
October 22, 2025
AI is fundamentally changing knowledge work by augmenting human expertise, automating manual tasks, and freeing professionals to focus on high-level strategy and creativity
Historically, knowledge work has been executed by skilled workers who collect and manage knowledge to solve complex problems, driving innovation, and creating strategies that push organizations forward. While these positions are intended for strategic oversight, they are frequently encumbered by cognitive overhead. The time and resources spent searching for information, manually processing data, and managing administrative tasks create a significant drag on productivity and often divert focus from mission-critical work.
Today, that reality is changing. AI is evolving from standalone tools into deeply integrated systems capable of fundamentally remodeling the landscape of knowledge work. This isn't about replacing human expertise; rather, this is about augmenting it. This new dynamic allows AI to handle manual, repetitive tasks, freeing knowledge workers to focus on the uniquely human skills of strategy, creativity, and critical judgment.
A New Model for Knowledge Work
AI is driving one of the most profound evolutions in knowledge work, shifting the ways in which work is getting done. As AI-powered automation handles routine tasks, employees are freed to concentrate on critical insights, creative problem-solving, and innovation. In this new model, knowledge work now also involves guiding technology by defining strategic goals for AI systems and applying critical human judgment to their outputs to amplify business results.
Making this strategic transition a reality requires tools that enhance, rather than disrupt, current workflows. Thread AI's Lemma platform is built with this flexibility and can integrate directly into the native software that employees currently use. By operating behind the scenes, our platform eliminates the learning curve and any productivity loss from switching between applications.
Role-based permissions provide each user with a curated library of AI solutions tailored to their job function. This targeted approach makes it simple to scale successful workflows as templates across the organization, accelerating the enterprise-wide shift from routine tasks to high-impact strategic work.
Putting AI to Work: A Real-World Example
We were approached by a customer to help them streamline a monthly customer-facing insights report. The report provides clients with data-backed insights and recommendations to optimize their brand strategies by identifying high-value marketing opportunities. Developed by their Media team, the report analyzes metadata, industry trends, and platform evolutions to give their brand clients a competitive edge.
The existing process is a manually intensive workflow that begins with coordinating globally distributed teams to source breaking news and case studies from a variety of data sources. All incoming information is unsystematically aggregated via various communication channels (e.g. email, chat, ad-hoc conversations), forcing a team of analysts to spend the vast majority of their time on the low-value tasks of collecting files, saving them to Google Drive, and tracking them in a Google Sheet.
Once all of the topics and data sources are aggregated, a team of analysts select which topics will be included in the report, review the relevant documents, and generate initial reports for each topic. Once these individual reports are generated, they are compiled into a single Google Slides presentation, reviewed by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and finally distributed to clients. The vast majority of time is spent on data collection, aggregation, and initial drafting, with the greatest amount of human expertise applied at the final stages.
For our solution, we streamlined this entire process end-to-end using Lemma Workers integrated directly into their existing environment.
The Workflow: Automated, Context-Aware Slide Generation
1
Data Ingestion and Organization
The process now begins when global teams email source documents to one dedicated email address.
As attachments come in, a Worker in our Lemma platform is triggered via a Gmail connector, capturing the attachment and any notes in the body of the email, saving the file to the Google Drive folder.
2
Master Data Source Update & Tagging
Simultaneously, the Worker populates a Google Sheet tracker with pre-defined data points, including the sender, purpose, and Drive location of the source file.
The document is also tagged and classified based on the company’s internal business logic, ensuring the right context is always available.
This is enabled by broad data access and context, as Lemma workflows are not limited to data within Google Workspace. Information from internal APIs, proprietary databases, CRMs, and other external systems can be dynamically included in the workflow context, enabling comprehensive and accurate outputs.
SMEs define the scope of information available to any given Worker, ensuring access to only the necessary data.
3
Workflow Triggering & Control
This is where direct integration transforms the user experience. Analysts can now initiate and refine their work using workflows directly from where they are in Google Workspace. This eliminates context-switching and accelerates task completion.
From the master Google Sheet, end-users can select the source documents they want to use and trigger the slide generation workflow directly via the Lemma add-on. This allows them to bundle multiple source documents for a single, comprehensive slide deck.
4
Refining Responses and Direct Iteration
After selecting the source documents and hitting "generate" in the add-on, the output is a Google Slide with content formatted to match the monthly report template.
The core power of this solution lies in how the slides are generated. The customer maintains complete control over the presentation's aesthetics via template slides, which the Lemma worker uses as the source of truth. The underlying business logic is included in the context as the AI model generates content.
This is where Lemma’s model agnostic architecture provides strategic flexibility. There is no vendor lock-in; the platform is designed to be dynamic. SMEs can evaluate and select the best model for a given application. For instance, choosing a cost-effective model for summarization or a high-performance model for complex reasoning. This ensures end-users receive optimal outputs aligned with performance and cost goals.
Finally, with integrations directly in Google Slides, teams can leverage AI to iterate on the content until finalized. This is powered by a built-in continuous feedback loop. The platform retains valuable contextual information from the initial generation through the final user iteration. This mechanism ensures the system continually learns from user input, leading to sustained improvement in content quality. The full context of the work is preserved, allowing for iterative work that continuously hones the final deliverable without reinventing the wheel.
Streamlining this end-to-end process has significantly reduced report generation time from weeks to days.
Embracing Change to Accelerate Impact
The integration of AI represents a fundamental paradigm shift for the modern enterprise. The nature of knowledge work is evolving from a focus on repetitive, manual execution to one centered on strategic oversight, creative problem-solving, and innovation. Embracing this transformation allows professionals to position themselves as key strategic contributors in this new era.
Lemma is the enabling technology for this transition. It provides the core infrastructure to reliably embed intelligent automation within mission-critical workflows, empowering knowledge workers to delegate deterministic tasks and amplify their most valuable cognitive skills. This allows professionals to accelerate output, expand their analytical capabilities, and become primary drivers of productivity and growth within their organization. The future of enterprise performance lies in the synergy between human expertise and machine intelligence, and the time to capitalize on it is now.
These capabilities are merely the tip of the iceberg for Lemma. Contact us and learn more.
