This is the best articulation of the positive integration of this technology I’ve seen yet. Thank you. The paintbrush analogy is fantastic. AI is also so helpful for closing gaps in practical knowledge. As one small example, I never learned basic cooking skills and it’s been an area of struggle and frustration - until now. I am finally enjoying cooking and building confidence. It supports my creativity as I share ideas and get step-by-step instructions on how to achieve them and failure modes to avoid.
I love the positive take on how AI could possibly shape a person’s life in ways they always wanted it to, but never imagined it would. It’s super easy to demonise new tech, and not actually understanding how beneficial it could be. Love myself a good rabbit hole :)
This is the problem when people get way, way, way too far out into Big Think instead of grounded in simple, daily reality. I don’t want whatever calendar app I can make; I want the best calendar app possible, that will anticipate problems I don’t even know I’ll have.
Taste. Careful design. Craft. These are durable advantages and scalable to everyone.
Look at food. We have had great food-making technology for quite some time. I can make a huge range of things based on my imagination in my very own home. Turns out restaurants and going out to eat are more popular than ever because I don’t want to eat my own slop. Taylorism is alive and well, baby.
Not really. Sure, eating out is nice, but so is cooking your own meal, however you like it. Having the best calender is great, until you miss a feature you can build yourself. With where technology is going everyone can own their craft, but perfect taste will stay relevant. I think we will continue to do both creating and consuming, just more accessible to everyone.
The “tax” metaphor for work is the one I keep coming back to — in organisation design, we’ve spent decades trying to engineer that ratio between meaningful work and overhead, and the idea that AI might genuinely shift it rather than just redraw where it sits feels more significant than most job design interventions I’ve seen.
Your reframe is the one I wish more leaders would adopt: not “which roles survive?” but “how much more of a role gets to feel like yours?”
The side-quest point holds up in practice too — the most valuable organisational breakthroughs rarely surface from strategy documents; they come from someone who followed a rabbit hole they couldn’t ignore.
That’s worth intentionally creating space for, not just hoping it persists by accident. A space for serendipity that a few great leaders have kept creating.
This revolution is empowering so many entrepreneurs to create amazing things for humanity that previously required significant capital, star alignment, and a hundred rejections to even get off the ground. It's 20x easier than 5 years ago to build a prototype and just try it. That's a lot more shots on goal. It's an incredible time to be alive.
Thank you Anish - I really enjoyed your perspective. I have many artists in my family and the paintbrush example is beautiful. It really expresses the mindset of the artist, and the fact that the output is not just the 'art' (a finished painting or sculpture) but usually also a healed or improved person for having made the art. If we can find more opportunity to create things AND create better humans, that is really exciting.
Hi Anish, this landed hard. Coming from 25 years in traditional enterprise delivery. Consulting sprawl, governance frameworks, the full Deloitte playbook. I thought I'd seen the evolution of tech. But the last 18 months have been different. It's like 1998 again, except this time I'm not watching others build, I'm actually building.
Shipped a few AI products for the UK market and the feeling is exactly what you describe: they don't lean back, they lean in. Building solo and staying up until 2am excited about what's happening. The paintbrush metaphor is perfect. I never thought I'd say this as someone who came up through enterprise, but the distribution problem feels trivial compared to the joy of making the thing. Curious where you're seeing the earliest wins in consumer vs enterprise on this.
Building Miru (WhatsApp-first UK life assistant) and Intel (brand intelligence) under Human Agency, both live now. That's where the paintbrush feeling is realest
Love your journey and have been following your fantastic videos.
Perspective is everything, and this a great one to have. Nothing is black and white, and on the spectrum of AI this is such a fantastic argument of why we can live in the "optimistic-gray".
I enjoyed reading this - nicely written, positive counterpart to the doomsaying and attention-grabbing that constitutes 80% of the content on AI. Where I disagree: The entry barriers have been lowered, but getting something right still requires a tremendous amount of work. We are a team of two builders, fully AI-native and it still took us 6 months (granted, next to our full-time jobs) to build a product that sells.
This is the best articulation of the positive integration of this technology I’ve seen yet. Thank you. The paintbrush analogy is fantastic. AI is also so helpful for closing gaps in practical knowledge. As one small example, I never learned basic cooking skills and it’s been an area of struggle and frustration - until now. I am finally enjoying cooking and building confidence. It supports my creativity as I share ideas and get step-by-step instructions on how to achieve them and failure modes to avoid.
I love the positive take on how AI could possibly shape a person’s life in ways they always wanted it to, but never imagined it would. It’s super easy to demonise new tech, and not actually understanding how beneficial it could be. Love myself a good rabbit hole :)
This is the problem when people get way, way, way too far out into Big Think instead of grounded in simple, daily reality. I don’t want whatever calendar app I can make; I want the best calendar app possible, that will anticipate problems I don’t even know I’ll have.
Taste. Careful design. Craft. These are durable advantages and scalable to everyone.
Look at food. We have had great food-making technology for quite some time. I can make a huge range of things based on my imagination in my very own home. Turns out restaurants and going out to eat are more popular than ever because I don’t want to eat my own slop. Taylorism is alive and well, baby.
Not really. Sure, eating out is nice, but so is cooking your own meal, however you like it. Having the best calender is great, until you miss a feature you can build yourself. With where technology is going everyone can own their craft, but perfect taste will stay relevant. I think we will continue to do both creating and consuming, just more accessible to everyone.
Great read, I’m going to take an art class
Really stimulating read!
The “tax” metaphor for work is the one I keep coming back to — in organisation design, we’ve spent decades trying to engineer that ratio between meaningful work and overhead, and the idea that AI might genuinely shift it rather than just redraw where it sits feels more significant than most job design interventions I’ve seen.
Your reframe is the one I wish more leaders would adopt: not “which roles survive?” but “how much more of a role gets to feel like yours?”
The side-quest point holds up in practice too — the most valuable organisational breakthroughs rarely surface from strategy documents; they come from someone who followed a rabbit hole they couldn’t ignore.
That’s worth intentionally creating space for, not just hoping it persists by accident. A space for serendipity that a few great leaders have kept creating.
This revolution is empowering so many entrepreneurs to create amazing things for humanity that previously required significant capital, star alignment, and a hundred rejections to even get off the ground. It's 20x easier than 5 years ago to build a prototype and just try it. That's a lot more shots on goal. It's an incredible time to be alive.
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Thank you Anish - I really enjoyed your perspective. I have many artists in my family and the paintbrush example is beautiful. It really expresses the mindset of the artist, and the fact that the output is not just the 'art' (a finished painting or sculpture) but usually also a healed or improved person for having made the art. If we can find more opportunity to create things AND create better humans, that is really exciting.
Loved it, probably the best thing I read this year. So many life lessons into it.
Nice one. Great to connect with you.
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Hi Anish, this landed hard. Coming from 25 years in traditional enterprise delivery. Consulting sprawl, governance frameworks, the full Deloitte playbook. I thought I'd seen the evolution of tech. But the last 18 months have been different. It's like 1998 again, except this time I'm not watching others build, I'm actually building.
Shipped a few AI products for the UK market and the feeling is exactly what you describe: they don't lean back, they lean in. Building solo and staying up until 2am excited about what's happening. The paintbrush metaphor is perfect. I never thought I'd say this as someone who came up through enterprise, but the distribution problem feels trivial compared to the joy of making the thing. Curious where you're seeing the earliest wins in consumer vs enterprise on this.
Building Miru (WhatsApp-first UK life assistant) and Intel (brand intelligence) under Human Agency, both live now. That's where the paintbrush feeling is realest
Love your journey and have been following your fantastic videos.
Nice work.
Perspective is everything, and this a great one to have. Nothing is black and white, and on the spectrum of AI this is such a fantastic argument of why we can live in the "optimistic-gray".
Fantastic read!
I enjoyed reading this - nicely written, positive counterpart to the doomsaying and attention-grabbing that constitutes 80% of the content on AI. Where I disagree: The entry barriers have been lowered, but getting something right still requires a tremendous amount of work. We are a team of two builders, fully AI-native and it still took us 6 months (granted, next to our full-time jobs) to build a product that sells.
This really resonates! Thanks for writing it.