Each morning brings the excitement of a world that seems to have changed overnight.
A new model arrives promising a novel way of working. Like unboxing an iPhone in 2008, but with the steady cadence of the near-daily Amazon Prime delivery ferrying its promise of expected newness.
Those gifts present puzzles for those on the cutting edge. They offer the opportunity to look at a problem with a supercharged machine, gleaming tools replacing the loved, blunted ones.
The puzzles contain at their center the promise of a fortune : rapidly appreciating stock & time saved, the promise of a better future.
AI is reimagining how we work. In San Francisco bars, the ultimate flex has become regaling acquaintances with tales of robotic workers acting on every whim, a testament to the power at our fingertips.
At the next cocktail table, a different crowd shares the wistfulness of a career that has suddenly been upended.
For many, AI represents a Pandora’s box of unwelcome change. The determinism of steady careers & processes has been replaced by the unpredictable agents that have brought the efficiencies of Taylor’s interchangeable parts to knowledge work.
AI reinforces imposter syndrome. We look around to find those who know what we’re doing with AI. How should I prompt this impossibly complex machine cloaked in a simple text box? How do I guide a team through a fog of rapid change?
At the dinner table, looking at bright young faces drinking their fortified milk wiping their mustaches, we wonder what world they’ll inherit from this transformation. What education could possibly prepare them?
Steven Jay Gould would dub it the end of the punctuated equilibrium. AI has upended the pax technologica of the last ten years, forcing rapid evolution for all of its opportunity both new & lost.