The real promise of AI is not more data, better processes or greater productivity, but more of humanity’s rarest luxury: meaningful time. However, current conversations in leadership teams and boards remain focused on the application of AI in business to boost productivity. In a recent survey of 200+ public company directors, for example, 80% said their boards are already acting on AI and nearly half (44%) have embedded AI into business areas to drive performance and efficiency, highlighting how leadership discussions centre on applying AI to boost productivity.
The real value, however, sits beyond this in purpose and exploring how AI can help businesses, organisations and individuals to truly reclaim time. In this way we can redefine ‘value and impact’ in an era of abundance.
Artificial Intelligence is eroding the old laws of capitalism, along with how we define and measure productivity, scarcity, and labour value. Put simply, as automation spreads across industries, AI is giving humanity something we haven’t had in centuries: abundance. And, how we manage this evolution is yet to unfold. When machines handle routine work and knowledge becomes instantaneous, the new scarcity isn’t data, capital, or talent, it’s time. Time to create, to reflect, to connect.
The companies that thrive in this new economy won’t just optimise efficiency, they’ll design time-rich ecosystems that return meaning to both employees and customers. This is what I call ‘Authentic Intelligence’ based on technology that doesn’t imitate humans but remembers them; systems that restore empathy, trust, and purpose at scale. In fact, the next competitive advantage won’t come from faster algorithms rather it will come from organisations which build technology to give humanity back its rarest luxury – meaningful time.
How we define progress in business and in life will fundamentally change. The convergence of automation and AI is creating the perfect storm for the birth of ‘The Time Economy’. And this new economy will shape and reframe progress with a shift in approach and mindset from:
- Productivity to creativity,
- Efficiency to meaning, and
- Growth for growth’s sake to growth with purpose.
Therefore, AI’s true value does not lie in intelligence at scale, but time returned to humans. Time to think clearly, decide responsibly, create meaning, and lead with purpose. In today’s enterprise landscape, data is abundant, models are plenty, and capital is readily sourced. Time is not. Time has become the scarcest and most valuable resource inside many organisations across the globe.
Furthermore, time scarcity is accelerating, and this is being driven by fragmented execution combined with increasing workloads. Most AI systems generate insights, recommendations, or answers, but still rely on humans to interpret outputs, coordinate systems, and close the loop manually. As a result, much of today’s enterprise AI unintentionally steals time instead of giving it back. It adds dashboards, alerts, prompts, and complexity, creating the appearance of productivity while increasing cognitive load.
So how can this problem be solved for industry as well as individuals?
The next chapter of AI is not about making machines think more like humans, but about designing systems that respect what makes us human: judgment, accountability, context, and responsibility. Today, most AI stops at insight. It can analyse, recommend, and advise, but it still leaves people to manually bridge the gap between intention and outcome.
What is missing is dependable execution. AI that can safely translate human intent into real action across complex enterprise environments. Systems that can plan actions, coordinate tools, respect business constraints, escalate when judgment is required, and leave a clear audit trail. When AI is designed to act, not just answer, complexity collapses. Workflows simplify, handoffs disappear, and decisions no longer stall between insight and outcome.
Regulated industries, including banking, telecoms and energy, experience the pain of complexity most acutely as time has historically been lost to compliance, legacy systems, and manual decision loops. A large telecommunications provider operating at national scale, for example, embedded AI directly into regulated customer service and cost-control workflows, allowing high-volume decisions to be executed automatically within predefined guardrails rather than escalated across multiple teams. By shifting AI from advisory support into live execution, the organisation reduced manual loops, handled millions of customer interactions autonomously each month, and returned significant time to frontline teams to focus on complex, high-value cases without compromising governance or control.
Nevertheless, the underlying problem, and solution, applies to all enterprises. Agentic AI experts, including Superbo, design AI systems to act, not just answer. Humans remain accountable for intent and outcomes, whilst AI handles execution within trusted guardrails. In this way we can reframe productivity so that the goal is no longer more output per hour, rather greater human value per decision.
Ultimately the true measure of successful AI isn’t model accuracy or speed, it is whether leaders and teams feel that they have more time to think, lead and to be human. AI won’t end capitalism; it will end scarcity. Time is the new capital (Time-ism).
