Navigating Disruptive Times in the Age of AI

With all the threats and opportunities that AI brings to our collective global table—and with its explosive progress toward AGI and super intelligence—the disruption is happening big time. Almost everyone is feeling it. Even OpenAI and the rest of the big tech got super disrupted a month ago with Deepseek R1 release.

This makes me wonder: Is AI’s disruptive nature the new game? Is it about economic gain, speed gain, or simply a hassle-free way of getting things done?

I share this perspective as a 50-something digital strategist and founder of a digital development studio, speaking for professionals and experts at large—a community I believe is still standing but is projected to be very disrupted. Today’s professionals at all levels of expertise have to jump on board with new tools and rework their workflows just to keep up. Soon enough, fusing expertise with fresh tools will be key to landing the next big opportunity.

Many of us are geeking out, playing with different tools—partly to do things we used to do with a fraction of the effort and in much less time, and partly to do things that weren’t even possible within our realm of capabilities. These attempts at “hacking” our way into producing something that once took considerable time, money, and hassle to create and deliver continue to be a lot of fun. Some of these experiments can be delivered, but most still remain just that—experiments. Yet, it’s hard to ignore the writing on the wall.

The tools are getting better and will only improve over time; that’s a given. The bet has always been that it takes an expert to get the best out of any of these tools—to write and tweak the prompts needed to extract the highest quality outcomes.

From early on until today, my nagging quest has been: Will the world, a few years from now, still need that ‘outcome’? Some will, but for the rest, only time will tell.

The goal, I suggest, is for us to go along, geek out, and augment our capabilities with different tools—saving time and cost while also creating new and more value in the process. That’s really the kind of game worth playing in my view.

Even if super intelligence comes along soon enough and takes over, then creating value will be the least of our worries. 😉