Every marketer knows this: You select a beautiful stock image, you build a website around it, and a few weeks later you see a competitor at a trade show using the same image in their booth.

Stock photos save us the cost of hiring a photographer (who wants to spend that kinda money!? No, seriously you should…), but stock photos remove all points of differentiation between us and our competitors.

When budgets are a constraint—and when aren’t they?—AI has a notable advantage here, as long as it can get the number of fingers right.

When we’re not trying to say anything specific, but rather just need “a doctor” looking at “a clipboard” with a “general sense of satisfaction” on her face, AI to the rescue! Now you can be sure that no one else has or will ever have the same image.

All things being equal? Go for AI (but count the number of fingers first).

When I was first apprenticing under a successful DJ at the tender age of 21, sitting in the studio writing music for 12 hours a day, I remember a lesson that stuck with me from then until now: details matter.

What struck me watching this professional at work, was how much time he spent on seemingly insignificant things. He could spend hours agonizing over the tiniest cross-fades on an audio track, stuff that I was 100% sure most people couldn’t even hear. It wasn’t about good enough, it was about chasing “perfection”. I learned that a thousand little details are what separate something great from something mediocre—the big picture is seldom the deal-breaker.

These days, I believe that every form of expression is music, whether it’s art, a website, a speech, a piece of content, you name it. And so many times in our lives, small-minded people will push back against the details: Who cares if this text is 10 pixels too far to the right? Who cares if this video is 10% too dark? Who cares if this audio is a little muddy, or a little harsh? Who cares? Why bother? Is the juice even worth the squeeze?

But in all forms of human output and expression, the details aren’t just details. They are everything. They are the difference between good and great. Always.

An article on Slashdot says:

The U.S. and China "are racing to build a truly useful humanoid worker," the Wall Street Journal wrote Saturday, adding that "Whoever wins could gain a huge edge in countless industries.

"Apparently "The time has come for robots," Nvidia's chief executive said at a conference in March, adding "This could very well be the largest industry of all."

The largest industry… The *last* industry? One industry to rule them all?

No this doesn’t feel ominous. No implications here, just positive good vibes all around! Go team! Replace those human workers!

Why are my pants wet, you ask? Oh, I must have spilled some water on them. Yes, that’s it. Water.

Remember the 4-Hour Workweek?

The alluring promise that if you never answer emails again and sell supplements from a landing page you can have money come into your bank account while you sip Mai Tais on a beach somewhere?

This book’s popularity and success 20 years ago tells us everything we need to know about the coming AI wave.

Artificial General Intelligence (or AGI) is meaningless, Artificial *Capable* Intelligence is everything: AI that can print investors money on demand.

Since as long as there’s been digital anything, people have been trying to fill their bank accounts while doing as little as humanly possible—I dare say it’s the American Dream! After all, who wouldn’t want to retire by the age of 23!?

Sure, some of us enjoy meaningful work, but the vast majority of us just want to lounge on a beach and never have to worry about money ever again.

Well, AI is nothing more than the ultimate money machine—the logical evolution of the last several decades of Blitzscaling wisdom.

Finally, a system that prints money for you without anyone having to do anything. Who cares how it works, why it works, or what it does, as long as the bank account inputs exceed the cost outputs.

If efficiency is simply removing any unnecessary step—like checking emails—between doing nothing and profiting, then Tim Ferriss was off by over 3 hours!

Side note: Buy my new book, The 15-Minute Workweek.

The era of explainable complexity ended with E=MC².

Sure you know Einstein’s famous equation, but be honest, you have no idea what it means.

And it’s not your fault. Gone are the days of individual contributions to science and tech, now begins the black box era of tech, where Quantum Computers crack impossible codes and AI models solve intractable problems without any single human being able to explain their reasoning.

With AI, software’s complexity will dwarf that of the great pyramids by orders of magnitude, and no single person will be able to understand any of it—much less how it all interacts.

“ChatGPT: Make me a profitable Amazon store that does $1 million a year in revenue. Design the product and negotiate the deals for me, create a web store, and collect the money on my behalf!” But who knows what it’s doing?

And that’s just it: As humans, we expect that any breakthrough technological advancement will be so elegant as to be easily explained, E=MC², DUH!

The reality is, the future will be utterly incomprehensible to even the world’s smartest humans. Now compare the genius brains of Silicon Valley to the folks on governing bodies who can’t find an emoji on their iphone, and it’s easy to see that we’ve got a massive communication problem on our hands.

Just because we won’t be able to explain our breakthroughs doesn’t mean we shouldn’t invest in trying.

Human progress is accelerating, and what was once cutting edge will be obsolete by the time your Pop Tart comes out of the toaster.

The world of today and tomorrow needs, more than ever, humans who know how to make the complex as simple as possible.