Machines won’t take your job. But humans who act like Machines will lose theirs. For the past 200 years, we’ve learned to work with machines to stay employed.
But in the decade ahead, we’ll need to re-learn how to be human to stay relevant.
Machines have mastered connecting the dots looking backward. They can sift through mountains of data and see patterns we’d miss. Competing with them here is a wasted effort.
But here’s the good news: machines still lack creativity, imagination, and originality. That’s our edge. The future belongs to those who double down on the strengths that make us human.
Let’s test that idea with a few thought experiments.
1. Literature
Imagine feeding every English text ever written before 1564 into a GenAI model and asking it to write plays.
Why 1564? That’s the year William Shakespeare was born. In his lifetime, he reshaped the English language with 39 plays, 154 sonnets, and three epic poems.
Four centuries later, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello still resonate on stages worldwide.
"To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
There is no question in my mind
Current AI LLM models could not have generated Shakespeare in 1564.
2. Science
Now imagine training AI on every scientific discovery up to 1900. Could it have dreamed up Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity (1905) or General Relativity (1915) — ideas that completely redefined space, time, and gravity?
Breakthroughs come not from data, but from minds bold enough to defy it.
3. Finance
What if we handed AI all of financial history and asked it to invent products? Would it have created calls, puts, covered calls, SPACs, CMBS, or credit default swaps? albeit all of them are Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction.
4. Arts
Could AI, even if trained on everything Leonardo da Vinci ever saw or read, have painted the Mona Lisa or The Last Supper?
5. The Human Edge
AI can recreate the past version of you.
But it can never invent the future you.
Your creativity, imagination, and humanity are the ultimate competitive advantage.
What do you think?
Blogging is something I enjoy, and I share my thoughts on my blog most weekends. Explore all my blogs at https://lnkd.in/ejq7CWaQ.
I am also experimenting with cross-posting my blogs on Substack (@iamnoguru) and on my personal website (iamnoguru).
I enjoyed letting my mind wander over the weekend, and I hope you did too.
Take it easy until next time.
Blogging is something I enjoy, and I share my thoughts on my blog most weekends.
Read all my “Notes to Self” at view all blogs.