Trillionaires: Holy crap! AI can build me a perpetual money machine!

Billionaires: Holy crap! Look what AI can do for my company!

Millionaires: Holy crap! Look what I can build with AI that I couldn’t have before!

Enthusiasts: Holy crap! Look what I can do with AI!

The Environment: Holy crap! Where did all my resources go?

Like tiny little bank-account-draining demons, the dozens of software subscriptions we all have chip away at us over time.

But here’s a secret:

Try to cancel as many of them as you can name today, and many will say “WAIT DON’T GO! HOW ABOUT 80% OFF FOR THE NEXT 3 MONTHS INSTEAD?”

Set a calendar reminder, and take the discount, saving you a bunch for the next several months.

Not enough for you?

Cancel 5 of them right now.

You’ll feel better.

…it’s about a way of seeing the world.

It’s not about the programming language or the specific tools.

It’s about solving problems.

If you can solve a problem, it doesn’t matter how you do it.

…all the tiny thorns in your side.

The little mosquito bites, easy to ignore, chipping away at your productivity.

Do you keep track of all the things you do over and over again?

If something’s given you repetitive stress, it’s a candidate for automation.

Do you ever behave like a robot in some part of your work?

Do you ever do the same thing over and over again, even if it’s a couple of minutes a day?

These are the things you can probably automate right now with AI and claim some small part of your sanity back.

Anyone who has a small child will know that anytime a birthday rolls around, you’ll get an influx of cheap plastic toys.

The vast majority of these become trash soon after they are purchased.

In fact, it’s shocking how quickly heavily-packaged items go from “brand new” to trash in our society, particularly in the kids' space.

And yet, in my garage, there’s a rusty pencil sharpener that must have been installed in the 1950s. I dusted it off the other day, and I doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that it still works perfectly, nearly a century later.

What of the things we buy from [insert name of the online store everyone buys everything from].com will stand the test of time?

And what should we give our kids instead?

Experiences! Swimming classes, piano lessons, a crazy dance class they’d never have gone to, that robotics course that might spark something real.