You're Already Doing It
Today I woke up and prepped the robot mower to do the backyard while I waited on the AI to fire up and start my website work. It is happening, folks.
We’ve been creeping into automation for decades. I don’t want to be another voice saying, “Just get used to it,” but we cannot put our heads in the sand. We can, however, be ready.
My message is that it is easier than ever to engage with the technology shaping our lives—in real time. When the internet arrived, people didn’t understand it. We often gloss over the fact that businesses, particularly media, were fiercely resistant because they felt the immediate impact on their bottom line.
Today we imagine everyone embraced the internet as a magical moment, but I remember bookstores closing, newspapers folding, Napster, and the chaos of early digital adoption. It was not easy, yet it was not the catastrophe the cynics predicted. But yes, we live in a world entirely different from the one twenty-five years ago.
I was at the forefront then, just as I am now. I loved the tech, but guess what? I didn’t capitalize on it. I lacked a business mind; I was too idealistic, believing the flow of information would empower humanity in a new Age of Aquarius.
Thirty years later, I’ve had my reckoning. The free flow of information turned out to be a conduit for the manipulation of information, but that is a story for another day.
The focus today is that the barriers to entry—those walls that once gave a select few an unfair advantage—have been leveled, utterly. I propose that if you are working a service or administrative role, you can compete with those who spent years in formal education but lack the raw talent for their field.
The complex skills required to navigate a high-pressure shift or manage the intricate scheduling of an executive are the exact same skills employed by those our culture tells us to admire. The only difference has been their access to specialized intelligence.
You have been practicing for the AI era your whole life and didn’t even know it.
And while I won’t dive into the shift from cloud-based subscriptions to local, home-based intelligence—just know that, as in the 80s when only the “nerdy kids” had computers, tomorrow will be the same for these intelligences.
The summary point is that you are likely already equipped to use AI to get ahead. Many will tell you there is no “ahead” to reach, but that is a mistake perpetuated by the frightened. Following those voices, or allowing yourself to despair, will only leave you behind in the exact place you fear.
If you want to be ready, talk to an AI. Play with it. Be a child with it. Pull out your verbal coloring books and draw outside the lines. Don’t fear what others call “slop,” because that AI-generated draft is akin to the crayon drawing your mother once pinned to the refrigerator, or the report cards she tucked into a special drawer, or the tee-ball trophies she polished. She saw in everything you touched the budding potential of your own brilliance. She knew you just needed the time and the experience to shape it.