All of us are being told a story that is wrong. AI substitution of human labor is not inevitable. It is a choice. And I think it’s the wrong one.
When Jack Dorsey announced that he fired thousands of people because they were not needed, and when Anthropic released its report that showed most jobs will soon be done by GenAI, the dominant reactions I saw were largely framed by an acceptance of the inevitability of the outcome. I believe that this framing is incorrect and damaging to business and society. And as someone who has been investing in technology software for 25 years and an AI entrepreneur myself, I want to clearly state that it’s past time for a different framing, one grounded in long-term economic value and human contribution.
The False Narrative of AI Inevitability
We’re being sold a bill of goods. AI is increasingly marketed as a substitute for human work itself, as if it can replace judgment, creativity, leadership, and originality. That’s nonsense. And yet, organizations are deploying AI like it’s the Hunger Games. Boards demand AI roadmaps. Employees are told to use it or risk falling behind. Some companies even tie usage to annual performance reviews. In the process, organizations reward polish while quietly suppressing originality, incentivizing conformity over insight and speed over thoughtful decision-making.
This isn’t a real strategy. Its corporate panic disguised as innovation.
Business school 101 teaches us that success requires both efficiency and differentiation. Efficiency keeps costs down. Differentiation drives pricing power. Confuse the two, and you fail the class. Yet a growing number of organizations are building an AI strategy around efficiency alone. That’s just bad business.
Efficiency Without Differentiation Is a Dead End
The reality of GenAI is that it has significant limitations. It is narcissistic, favoring AI generated content over human data, and it generates homogeneity of information. This tendency towards sameness means that it is extraordinarily efficient at generating output. But what looks impressive is often statistically central. The question that needs to be asked is what happens to businesses and society when everyone uses the same models trained on the same data, everything converges, and before long, we all sound the same.
This is clearly a social problem. But it’s also an economic problem. When all businesses are equally efficient due to using AI, how will they differentiate? The answer is simple: differentiation will come from original thinking. It will come from the inherent aptitude that all of us have. Generating and valuing novelty.
Although not as widely reported as it should be, data demonstrates that when people use AI as an adjunct to their inherent originality, the quality of the output exceeds what humans or AI can do on their own. Conversely, data is also emerging that when people over rely on AI outputs they face risks of cognitive decline. The widely reported corporate phenomenon of “work slop” is the most reported example.
In short, placing a premium on AI as a substitute for human labor will limit AI’s ultimate value to business and society.
Original Thinking Is the Real Competitive Edge
So, if tools now exist to identify human originality and better join humans and AI into creating value why aren’t we talking about that?
Some of this is clearly driven by national security concerns. Great power competition with China leads some to argue that there cannot be any limitations on AI deployment or development. Others, I think, are just in love with their technology and as inventors often are, want to see their inventions flourish. And others are just simply pursuing profit maximization. None of them are wrong.
To all of them I say plainly: putting humans in the value chain doesn’t undermine your arguments or desires. Quite the opposite.
The New Competitive Frontier: Original Intelligence
The way forward isn’t to slow down AI adoption out of fear. It’s to get serious about where true value lies. Don’t ask whether your team members are using AI. Ask what they’re amplifying when they do, and whether it strengthens or weakens their ability to think independently.
Because in an AI-saturated economy, competence is cheap. Distinct perspective is not. Pricing power will increasingly flow to organizations that can demonstrate value beyond what AI can predict. Talent advantage will shift toward people who can generate insight outside the statistical center. And leadership advantage will belong to those who know when to rely on automation and when to override it.
That’s the next competitive frontier.
