Every disruptive new technology prompts us to confront two key questions.
The first is ‘what can this help with?’—What are you already doing that this new tech will allow you to do better, cheaper or faster?
The second is ‘what can I do with this’—What does this allow you to do that couldn’t be done before?’
Much of the time we’re called to examine how we can do our work better and more effectively. How we can ‘tool up for the work.’ But every now and then a tool comes along that is so disruptive that it compels us to consider how we can ‘work around the tool.’
In last week’s Friday Reflection I discussed how AI has disrupted the project management triangle—now you can have faster, cheaper AND better, and so can everyone else. I also discussed how AI will continue to replace tasks and roles wherever the human element is lacking.
But AI doesn’t only allow you to do what you are already doing but better. The scale of the opportunity presented by AI means that it is no longer sufficient—for any organisation or working individual—to ask only how AI can help take the edge off their existing work. It is necessary to go much further, and ask what new things you can create and what additional problems you can solve with this new capacity.
The same was true for all previous technological revolutions.
The invention of writing (in multiple regions independently) didn’t only allow for better memory (vs. oral transmission), but for the systematic accumulation of knowledge, legal systems and long distance trade. These were entirely new capabilities that weren’t previously possible.
Steam power (and the combustion engine that followed) didn’t only allow people to manufacture cloth faster. It allowed them to travel further than they ever could, and meant that cities no longer needed to be built next to rivers, enabling them to reach populations of millions.
The internet hasn’t only allowed for better and faster communication, research and publishing. It has enabled global coordination in real time, remote work at scale, formation of global communities and blown open access to information.
AI opens up such possibilities that failing to ask this question will be fatal to your career or organisation, no matter what it is. While AI allows you to access a wealth of power and expertise, the flip side is it will also prise from you anything that is not uniquely, humanly yours—anything that you are holding onto too tightly or that an inflated professional self-image depends on.
If you have built a career on illusions and misdirections, or on bullying and power play under the guise of something else, AI will have that veil lifted. Every employee now has a legal advisor, logician and ethicist accompanying them to every performance review and meeting and checking every email. Just as the internet put a thorn in the side of societal scale abuse, AI is doing the same on the individual level—the next step in the democratisation of accountability.
None of these previous technologies took the humanity out of human connection, crafting a hand-made piece of art or enjoying a walk in the countryside. Neither did they remove the need to apply your own assessment to the information you read and hear. But they did highlight some of the difference between what was being chosen freely vs. what was mere necessity.
At the individual level, the capabilities you will gain from AI include not only previously unimagined innovations that are new to everyone, but also existing capabilities previously only possible for specialists—those which are new to you. In addition to opening up new societal possibilities, AI also opens up new possibilities for individuals.
The invention of writing meant that all individuals could access knowledge previously only accessible to scholars and priests.
Steam power meant that everyone, not only elites, could travel long distances, afford a wider variety of goods and live separate from their workplace.
Bicycles meant individual mobility outside of owning a horse.
The internet now means that anyone can access specialised knowledge, publish without a publisher, learn freely from experts and organise around shared interests globally.
Where the internet democratised access, AI democratises capability. Both are subject to human limits—just as a human must know how to assess and make use of information, they must also know how to apply the capabilities of AI. While coding, personalised diet advice, building spreadsheets and analysis of your medical reports might not be new, they might be new to you as being within your own capabilities, and that is just as meaningful for you as an individual and your road to self-knowledge as never-before-seen innovations.
This category of applications for AI might actually be the most compelling for most professionals in the immediate future. What can you now do that you previously had to hire for, outsource, or neglect entirely?
In my own business with Make it Conscious, I have used AI to help with:
- Building the Personality Dynamics Assessment in mere months rather than years, including backend logic, custom coding, statistical analysis, report writing and delivery
- Creating symbolic imagery for Jung’s eight cognitive functions based on human-drawn inputs
- Audio editing for guided active imagination exercises and podcasts
- Writing a custom python script for adjusting exercises into standard and extended versions
- Web maintenance and custom coding (including getting the site back online after a recent WordPress update broke some things)
- Building a custom CRM system MVP
- Researching new plugins and tools
- Repetitive admin work such as importing posts automatically from the MiC blog to Medium or changing settings on the podcast
- Notetaking during meeting and coaching sessions
The main AI tools I am using are Claude, Cursor, Descript, Midjourney, Fireflies, Gemini and OpusClip.
Many of these tasks would either not be possible, or simply unviable in terms of time or money. At the very least they would have taken substantially longer.
Just like with the early days of the internet, AI will open up new possibilities that cannot even be conceived of today. But the more I explore these ideas and put them into practice, the more I realise that the difference between ‘doing things better’ and ‘doing new things’ is not so clearly demarcated. Sometimes ‘doing new things’ means doing the same thing better. And sometimes ‘doing things better’ is precisely what opens up opportunities of an entirely different quality. Quantity has a quality of it’s own!
What are we doing today that is different from the days of the early internet? On the surface, most things. But fundamentally we are still connecting, exploring, learning and working.
More important than the quantity of your work, or the quality of your capabilities, is the direction with which you are moving—is it towards great self-realisation? Or self-avoidance? Technology can facilitate both options but ultimately can do none of the work for you.
There are a lot of grey areas between that which is the same but better and that which is truly new. But the one thing that unifies them is they can all help you be more truly you.
