One of Steve Jobs’ great quotes is the concept of the computer as a bicycle for the mind (dramtically increasing human efficiency/impact). I think it’s valuable to consider the recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) advances, especially Generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT) as a next level of acceleration in human impact, like an electric bike or motorcycle for the mind (an analogy many have made, e.g. Generative Coding: A Motorcycle for the Mind).

If you haven’t dug into how Generative AI works, it’s easy to see some of the impressive responses and think that AI will be replacing your job soon. Instead, I think it’s important to realize how Generative AI works (see this great 50 minute video below, where Cal Newport explains how it works), picking one word at a time to generate a response that usually ‘sounds right’, but sometimes has huge factual issues (hallucinations).

That said, Generative AI can be a powerful acclerant for knowledge workers — CIOs in SIMCAC (DC-area CIO/IT Leader group I’m in) have been using it to draft a policy (like a new Cloud Governance Policy) or to transcribe and summarize meetings, from recorded audio. I have developer friends who use AI to quickly write new source code, or analyze existing code. Using AI offer huge time-savings, but humans are still in the loop. Otherwise, bad things happen, like this lawyer who used AI and didn’t check that the citations were real (spoiler: they weren’t).

We’ll see dramatic changes to how companies employ people, as AI helps some people become incredibly more impactful and efficient — some companies will start to be able to do more and move more quickly, while others will be able to dramatically reducing operating costs.