So many of my intuitions about AI have been dead wrong. Turns out it is bloody hard to predict how it is going to shake out.
I thought AI automation would result in us doing less work. Wrong. We are producing more outputs, faster, but they need verification and judgement. And so, we are working more not less.
I thought AI would mean job reductions. Wrong. My intuition was that if someone was three times more productive, it would be rational for firms to reduce headcount because one person can do the job of three for the same cost. Turns out the rational thing is that firms want all three people to be three times more productive and in fact the incentive is to hire more.
I thought token costs would come down. Wrong. I thought Moore’s law dynamics would kick in for AI compute but right now token costs are more like doubling than halving every 18 months and they would be through the roof if they were not massively subsidised by VC like early Uber rides.
I thought teams would move faster. Wrong. Individuals are moving faster and producing more but teams are a drag because of the increased volume of an individual’s output that needs to be aligned on.
I thought the value of human writing would go down as AI does more of it. Wrong. AI writing converges to slop. It takes expert skill and effort to generate good writing outputs. Human writing really stands out now and is becoming more valuable not less.
I thought AI would result in fewer meetings. Wrong. There are more meetings now because there are more outputs to align on and AI notetaking turns a meeting into a knowledge capture session.
I thought AI would level the playing field. Wrong. A competent AI user produces more valuable outputs. An incompetent person is producing more but it is just slop. The gap is widening.
I thought we would be more efficient. Not really happening because the more we produce, the more we have in the queue for applying judgement and verification.
I thought there would be more creative diversity. Wrong. The nature of model training and the way they are being used is resulting in a bit of a creative monoculture. Websites all look the same, copy sounds the same, etc.
These are just observations as of May 2026. It is early days and I am super bullish on AI. Generating slop today is perhaps the behavioural equivalent of hitting reply-all on every email back in the day and typing “Thanks”. It got better after that.
My intuition is that it is all going to get much better but I keep getting these predictions wrong.
