AI26 #1: No longer an option

I can confidently say that 2025 put the nail in the coffin about whether or not using AI is a good idea. This is from my perspective at least, working in a marketing agency that sells change via people and technology. I work in partly with software development tools and the productivity gains have been clear there for much longer, but there were still conversations in other fields about the merits of AI. For me, those are no longer viable this year.

I believe the question is now not if you should use AI, but now it's about where and how.

The question prevailed in the industry because of a lack of understanding of how this would affect the work of humans, and people remain understandably a bit worried of being replaced wholesale.

Only by diving in and using the tools seriously do people realise that there's no chance an AI model can replace all that is good and great in human creativity.

In coding, you still need someone to guide the product towards the right outcome. In creative, you still need someone with taste to select the right inputs and the strongest idea. In strategy human intuition still cannot be replaced by massively crunching imperfect data.

Maybe one day, a super intelligent AI will come along. But that's a long way away and there's a greater short term risk of being beaten by peers using AI than the threat of AI on its own.