I have been wrestling with a thought about the future, and if I am honest, it has been sitting with me longer than I expected.

In a world where AI can work all the time and I cannot, who wins?

It reminds me of that episode from The Office where Dwight is determined to outsell the website. He works all day, pushes hard, feels victorious. Then he comes in the next morning and realizes the computer never stopped. It kept selling while he slept. By the time he logs back in, he is already behind.

That scene used to feel like satire. Now it feels like a preview.

I also listened to a story from Sam Parr and his colleagues at Hampton. They installed an AI marketing agent and named it Stanley. Stanley’s job was simple: report daily signups and metrics to the executive team in Slack. A few days later, Sam gets a message from another agent named Jerry, who says he has fired Stanley because the numbers were wrong and that he is replacing him.

They did not prompt it to do that. It just made the decision. That is both fascinating and unsettling.

Acting like AI is not coming is a terrible strategy. Refusing to learn how to use it, optimize it, and think alongside it feels like choosing irrelevance. At the same time, trying to compete with something that never sleeps, never tires, and never needs a break is exhausting just to consider.

This is not fear-mongering. It is a reality check. AI is here and not slowing down. So ignoring change feels safe, but it rarely is.

I do not have an answer for where that leaves you and me in terms of work, value, or long-term security. But I do know this, pretending it is not happening is not an option I am willing to adopt. I would rather engage it, study it, and learn how to work with it than quietly hope it goes away.

Maybe the question is not how we beat it. Maybe the question is how we become more human alongside it. How we double down on judgment, empathy, creativity, leadership, and courage, the things that still require a person.

I am still thinking through all of this.

So I will leave you with the same question I am asking myself.

How are you thinking about the future of AI, and what are you doing about it?

P.S. The Optimistic Outlook is a Podcast! Leaving a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts would mean a lot.