Brian Edwards has been a cherished colleague and friend of ours for several decades. His son, Bobby, is clearly a chip off the old block. When Brian proudly shared with me Bobby’s reflections on the impact of AI on our life and work, I immediately asked for his permission to republish it.
Our industry and its leaders are struggling mightily with the role AI could and should play in our businesses. Bobby’s article sheds a different light on the issue and is worth reading by any human.
Look out, it’s another AI read. But this one is different. It’s not just one you’ll want to read, it’s the one you need to read. At least before our lives are optimized into a dashboard and summarized back to us as a weekly report. This is ”How Humans Win.”
The creds:
61% of American adults have used AI in the past 6 months. Nearly 1 in 5 rely on it every day. Scaled globally, that’s over a billion people who have used AI, and hundreds of millions using it daily. We’ve passed the tipping point and progressed from curiosity to infrastructure. Cool.
The tension:
Only 17% of Americans believe AI will positively impact society over the next 20 years. 56% of AI experts feel the same. Talk about a gap. Also, twenty years?!
It took Netflix 10 years to reach 100 million users. Spotify over 4 years. It took ChatGPT less than 3 months. Yet this AI arms race, and a barrage of speculating, predicting and anticipating the future, floods all social platforms (AB: and boardrooms) and news publications. We can’t possibly know what will happen in the next 20 years, let alone 20 months. So what can we do? More specifically, what can you do? You can focus on you, and you can do it now.
Quick disclaimer – future proofing is necessary. It’s what many, if not all, of our jobs require and there is no escaping that. But this obsession with what’s next is the fastest way to miss what is happening right now.
Humans are winning.
I don’t mean the human collective. And I definitely don’t even mean at scale; jobs are being replaced by AI every day. However, there are humans out there that are winning and you should be one of them. You need to be one of them. Otherwise, the concerns of the remaining 83% -those who don’t believe that AI will be a net positive – will become a reality for you. And it will happen swiftly with no remorse. You can submit if you want or you can ascend.
Yasu Sasaki, Global chief Creative Officer of Dentsu, said: “AI is exceptionally good at prediction, but creativity by its nature is unpredictable. The premium on originality and innovation has never been higher”. Yasu hit the nail on the head with this statement. The thing is, this unpredictability doesn’t only apply to creative. There is an irreplaceable human element in most jobs, and that’s where opportunity lies. You need to find it in yours.
Check our Shae O. Omonijo’s work if you need a spark. Her video on Critical thinking at the age of AI will challenge your current mindset. She addresses how AI depends entirely on us – on humans. Our books, our lectures, our songs, our conversations (AB: even K-pop!). “You’re taking a mirror of human-generated content when you speak to AI. Artificial intelligence is predictive in its response, but it can’t think. And it definitely can’t conduct deep critical thinking. That’s purely a human ability. (AB: This is why so many AI functions are about routine and clear business rules).
Just take a look at the evolution of AI. For a long time, the goal of advanced AI was to think like a human. To reason, feel, and understand the world the way we do. Being intelligent meant being human-like. That goal has quietly changed. OpenAI and researchers like Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio (note: if AI had a list of “founding fathers” they’d be undoubtedly near the top) are redefining intelligence as “the ability to outperform humans at economically valuable tasks.” Not understanding. Not judgment. Not meaning. Just productivity at scale. (AB: My article about the application of AI in community banking builds on that concept and recommends that we apply AI solely for that function, as different from the largest banks that are using it primarily to improve customer experience.) In other words, AI doesn’t need to be human anymore. It just needs to be useful.
The danger isn’t that machines become more human. It’s that we start measuring ourselves the same narrow way: by tasks completed, output produced, and value priced by a market. If intelligence is now defined by task efficiency, AI will always win at the parts of work that are predictable, repeatable and measurable (AB: this is why we should identify as many such tasks and relegate those to AI).
But the most human parts of work, like judgment, taste, empathy, creativity, and the ability to make sense of ambiguity, don’t fit neatly into a task list or a spreadsheet. Those things don’t scale cleanly. And that’s exactly why they matter more now, now less.
If you build value around tasks, you’re competing with machines on their terms. If you build value around human insight, you’re operating in a category machines can’t enter.
I’ll spare you the rant about how right now many industries, especially marketing, need strategists. How the roles that feel farthest from the bottom line are the easiest to cut first are often the exact ones companies desperately need. Instead, I’ll focus on the single most human job in the world – being a parent.
I have two little dictators at home (I say this with the utmost love; being a parent is my favorite job and its’ not even close). My daughter is almost four and my son recently turned one. My wife and I are in the sleep-deprived, beautifully chaotic early years that are both the hardest and best of our lives. We’ve read the books. We’ve listened to the podcasts. We’ve spoken with countless doctors, other parents, even the wall a few times during particularly long nights. Guidance is abundant but do you want to know the one, single piece of advice everyone defaults to? “You know your kid.”
That’s it. That’s the safety net. There are countless studies, best practices, tips, tricks… the list goes on. An entire industry built on making sense of things. But at the end of the day, consensus is that you just have to know your kids. There it is, the irreplaceable human element. For fellow parents out there, I hope this makes it all make sense in your day job. And for those who aren’t parents, at least take this anecdote with a grain of salt and please enjoy your full night of sleep tonight. (AB: if you’re a dog owner you’ll know what Bobby means as well).
In either case, my push for you is to find that “know your kid” element in your job. This about the irreplaceable human element that’s unique to your role. Run with it. Get better at it. Evolve it. Perfect it. Then pull it apart and do it again.
If you need a starting point, MIT Sloan School of Management has a list (EPOCH) of capabilities that humans have that AI does not. It’s a quick read and will set you on the path to winning. AI is redefining intelligence downward to what it can do best. Your advantage is leaning into what it can’t do at all.
If an algorithm is reading this in 20 years, that alone doesn’t mean AI won. Algorithms exist. They always will. AI only wins if we decide that efficiency is intelligence, that output is judgment, and that being human is optional. Choosing not to make those tradeoffs is how humans win.
Note: Pew Research, MenloVentures and BOND were used as sources for this article.