I keep seeing a certain type of post on LinkedIn…

“AI won’t beat me… because I’m human.”
“While you chase AI outputs, I’ll build teams people actually want to be part of.”
“My money’s on me.”
“AI should be used for [insert a wicked problem here] and not for [insert one of your job tasks here].”

And look… I want that to be true (I really, really do).

I want to believe that empathy, connection, culture and trust will always be “us”… the human stuff.
That the stuff we can’t quite quantify… let’s call it the “analog magic”… is the moat.

But what if that belief is blinding us?

What if we’re seriously underestimating what AI already is… and what it’s rapidly becoming?
This isn’t just about replacing spreadsheets or writing marketing copy.
This is about a technology that’s being trained (constantly) on everything we’ve ever collectively created:
Every leadership book, negotiation strategy, therapy model, military tactic, hiring framework, brand campaign, scientific theory, pricing strategy, sales email, cultural study, academic paper, operations manual and product roadmap… and on… and on…

All of it.

Fed into a system that can simulate decisions (and do this based on different strategists on demand), adapt to feedback, generate context and optimize outcomes at a level no single human (or team) could ever match.
So no… I don’t think AI is “coming for us.”

I think AI is already here (and, as the saying goes, it’s just not evenly distributed… yet).

And it’s doing the work… now.
Sure, it’s not perfect (yet)… it drifts… it hallucinates… it makes mistakes… actually… that sounds very human to me.
The problem isn’t that humans can’t keep up.

The problem is that we keep pretending this is a race we’re still clearly winning.

So yes, build great teams.
Yes, prioritize culture, belonging and all the analog magic that makes organizations great.

But also… be honest…

What happens when AI doesn’t just support your work…
It starts doing it… not emotionally, but objectively better.
Not just faster… but with more precision… with more recall… and original outputs.
With every insight from every leader who’s come before you… synthesized in milliseconds.

That’s not a co-pilot… that’s a new species of competition.

And the answer isn’t to throw up our hands or retreat into feel-good slogans about how great humans are.
It’s to integrate… strategically… proactively… intelligently.

This is not dystopia.
This is design.

We need leaders who can hold two ideas at once:

That empathy, creativity and trust do matter…
And that AI might soon be better than us at deploying those very qualities… at scale, without burnout, ego or bias (until we – hopefully – code it back in?).

So here’s what I’m wrestling with:

If “being human” is no longer our competitive edge… then what is?
Not a slogan… not a tweet… a real answer.

Let’s hear it…

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