Front Row Seat

The AI revolution looks different from a town that's already been left behind.

Abe Alassaf grew up in Millfield, Ohio-population 493, a former coal mining town that used to mean something and then didn't. He watched the mines close, the stores shutter, and the promises of "retraining programs" and "new industries" evaporate into nothing. He learned the lesson coal country has always known: no one is coming to help.

Now, as Deputy Director at a housing commission and Head of Business Development for an AI robotics company, Alassaf has a front-row seat to the next great displacement-and this time, it's not just one industry or one region. It's everyone. It's everywhere. It's labor itself.

Front Row Seat is not another breathless Silicon Valley prophecy about abundance and transcendence. It's a clear-eyed look at what's actually coming, written by someone who's already lived through what happens when the economy moves on without you.

Drawing on the ideas of Stuart Russell, Yuval Noah Harari, Geoffrey Hinton, and Ray Kurzweil-while grounding them in the lived reality of Appalachian Ohio-Alassaf asks the questions the optimists don't want to answer: What happens when the elite don't need us anymore? What happens when even the "surrogate activities" that give us purpose disappear? And what do you do when you can see the wave coming but can't get out of the way?

The movie is playing. You didn't write the script. You can't stop the projector.

But you can pick your seat.