Perfect Saturday bike trip with my wife
30km along the river, train home, total cost = €3.50
In America this would require driving 3 hours, $25 parking, and a tip to a homeless guy to not touch your car
I love living in Europe
Everyone says “AI will take all the jobs.”
If that happens… how does this future actually work?
No jobs → no income → no spending.
So who buys things? Who pays rent? Who keeps the economy moving?
What am I missing here?
Here are 13 things learned after making a big push to integrate AI into our companies:
1. We haven’t replaced a single external SaaS tool with something we built internally.
2. We have refrained from hiring numerous entry level jobs because AI can do the work faster/better/cheaper.
3. The automation provided by AI highlights how much time every person was wasting on tedious tasks daily.
4. Each company is capturing more revenue and each employee is becoming more productive.
5. There is still a bit of apprehension in giving agents full control of machines or systems.
6. There has been no obvious trend in age, gender, or role for those who adopt AI the fastest. More of a mindset than anything.
7. Many non-technical people have started to create software tools or products, which has changed the speed of execution across the companies.
8. One downside is the AI slop across written documents/memos. If humans don’t review the content, it is painful to read and I worry critical thinking gets lost.
9. The implementations of AI are incredible once you get them done, but it is much more difficult to build/implement than most people want to communicate online. Persistence needed!
10. We have walked away from numerous potential small acquisitions because we realized we could build the product ourselves for a fraction of the cost.
11. Our best engineers are invincible now. They produce high quality products at warp speed. Forget 10x engineers, they are 1,000x engineers now.
12. The adoption of AI starts at the top. If the company leader is not constantly asking “how do we automate this?,” it is harder to drive internal change.
13. I am personally working harder than I have in a long time and having more fun than ever. It feels like a moment in time that has to be seized.
Overall, I believe AI is underestimated, not overestimated. The worries about SaaS software are probably overblown. The labor market impact is very real and only accelerating.
Businesses are fundamentally changing. Start paying attention!
@nut_history Guy next to him runs the Cooperstown tournaments. Younger sons team played from 10:30 am to 2:30 am on the final day of their tourney - 7 games in one day, lost in the final 8 (over 100 teams).