Time to get smart on AI

It's here so you might as well figure it out

Feb 09, 2025

👋Hello, my friend. Thanks for all the notes on last week’s walk down memory lane. It turns out many of my readers are even bigger degenerates than me! Nice to be in good company. Anyhow, this week I’m thinking less about the past and more about the present and future—specifically as it relates to AI. I’ve been going down every AI rabbit hole I can find recently — listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos, trialing different tools — and today, I’m going to give you a sense of what I’m learning at a high-level. Perhaps, though, the most value I can provide is sharing my sources, so check out the Content Diet section at the end where I’ve included the best recent content I’ve consumed on the topic.

Let’s do it!

IW Podcast - Ep.36 - Kevin Smith - AI, Podcasts & the Future of Learning

If you read my favorite things article around Christmas time, you’ll know that I’ve been using an AI-powered app called Snipd to listen to podcasts. It’s pretty awesome. It does a ton of stuff including taking notes for you on specific sections of podcasts that you find interesting. Anyhow, I posted something nice about the app on Twitter, ended up getting connected with the CEO, and this conversation is the result. Kevin Smith and I talk about how AI is totally changing how we listen to podcasts and more broadly, how we learn. He’s based in Zurich and also gives some pretty amazing Switzerland travel recommendations if you stick around til the end of the episode. Here’s a LINK Kevin gave me if you want to try Snipd for 1 month for free.

🤖 Time to get smart (or maybe just less dumb?) on AI

AI is going to change the world. You and I both know that already. But what most people don’t realize is just how much it’s going to change the world—or how fast it’s going to happen.

Most people I talk to know AI is a big deal. They know they should be paying attention. Companies have innovation teams. People are tinkering with it here and there. But I’d say 95% of people are still underestimating both the extent of AI’s impact and the pace at which it’s coming.

So let’s talk about a few ways this technology has the potential to completely reshape the world—probably much sooner than you might expect.

📚Education: The AI Tutor That Knows You Better Than You Know Yourself

I’m already seeing AI impact how my kids learn.

Just last week, my 13-year-old son had to study for a test on the Bill of Rights. I asked Google’s Gemini to generate a quick study guide for him and to format it for an app called Quizlet. (I verbally made this request, pretty much in those exact words). It took two seconds to generate what we needed and the content was exactly on point. We dropped it into his app, and instantly, he had flashcards and tests to go over again and again until he had the material down.

That’s just one small example, but the bigger shift is this: we’re entering an era of personalized education.

Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all textbooks. Instead, every student will have an education built just for them—tailored to what they already understand, what they struggle with, and how they learn best. Maybe they prefer to listen. Maybe they like videos. Maybe they need interactive exercises. AI will adapt to them in real-time. This isn’t "pie in the sky"—this technology is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.

It’s obvious that highly motivated students will thrive in an AI-powered education system. If you’re motivated, there’s now literally nothing stopping you from becoming an expert in almost any area. But, counterintuitively, AI might also be a huge benefit to students who aren’t as motivated. One of the most powerful motivators is simply experiencing success. The traditional education system hasn’t always been set up to help these kids—they fall behind, don’t understand certain concepts, and eventually become disillusioned with learning. But if AI can adapt to them in real-time, helping them grasp concepts at their own pace, they might finally start seeing some success—which could be the spark that keeps them engaged.

I saw a tweet this week (see below) from a guy who homeschools his kids. He's using AI tools for two hours a day to educate his kids and claims they are on track to complete a full high school curriculum by 13 years old. Even if this is half true, that’s crazy.

The ripple effects of this will be massive. Here’s one: A lot of families spend a lot of money sending their kids to private schools and elite universities. But if every kid on Earth has access to a world-class education for free, that raises some uncomfortable questions about whether it really makes sense to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for an education.

Don’t get me wrong. This is GREAT news for society. It just makes the value proposition for private schools and universities a bit murkier. If you’re not paying for a better education (probably arguable to begin with), are you paying for the social or professional network? The prestige? The access to sports? If that’s really the value proposition, I’m not sure the economics make sense anymore.

If I’m a private educational institution in this new AI-powered world, I might be a little worried.

👔Work: The White-Collar Job Disruption That’s Coming Fast

Right now, most companies are experimenting with AI. They have innovation teams. They’re playing around with Microsoft Copilot. But it hasn’t yet materially changed most people’s day jobs. That’s about to shift—fast.

Over the next 12 to 18 months, AI is going to become a core part of how businesses operate. Will there be job losses? Without a doubt, possibly at a massive scale. Will there also be a step-change in individual productivity that rivals and probably surpasses what the Internet ushered in? I think so.

We’re going to see AI-powered “agents” designed for specific job functions. They’ll track what you do on your computer for a week and then be able to replicate a shocking amount of it — and they’ll do it more quickly and accurately. Oh, and they work nights and weekends.

Andrew Wilkinson, on the My First Million podcast, talked about a (near) future where we all have an army of digital workers at our disposal. Imagine hopping on a Zoom call with your AI lawyer, AI marketing manager, or AI accountant—who looks like a real person, talks like a real person, and does the work instantly. That’s the world we’re heading toward—as soon as this year.

As a result of all of this, I think it’s possible that we may have seen the peak of large companies. I’m just not sure it’s going to make sense for any company to employ thousands of people in a few years time. The AI is just going to be too damn efficient.

If that’s true, and we do see massive workforce disruption, I think we need to start considering the implications for society at large.

Maybe this is extreme to consider, but in a world where AI eliminates, let’s say, 25% of white-collar jobs, how do we adjust? What happens when millions of people no longer have traditional employment? Some form of universal basic income? Mass retraining efforts?

As a society, we’ve gotten used to seeing blue collar manufacturing jobs get wiped out, but we haven’t seen white collar or so-called “information” workers get massively disrupted. This is going to be a shock for many information workers who have previously considered themselves “safe” or “established” in their careers.

But it’s not all bad news! I predict that this technology will also usher in a massive entrepreneurial renaissance. If you have access to an army of digital workers — basically for free — you can launch almost any business you can dream of for very low cost. So the big company route may close off for you, but making a living off that side business may become a much more realistic (and hopefully profitable) option. As a parent, I want my kids starting to experiment with entrepreneurship now.

💉Healthcare: The AI-Driven Longevity Boom

Another area AI is going to revolutionize? Healthcare.

AI can process all human medical knowledge, analyze every study ever published, and run an infinite number of simulations to determine what treatments and medicines actually work.

We are potentially on the verge of a major leap forward in human longevity.

The CEO of Anthropic, one of the world’s leading AI companies, recently said that he believes it’s possible that AI could help double human lifespan in the next five years. I mean even if that’s directionally correct… what?!?!?

If AI-driven healthcare advancements significantly extend human lifespan, the ripple effects will be massive—and not fully understood yet. One of the most obvious areas that would have to be completely rethought is retirement. If people are living 20 or 30% longer, how they save, when they retire, and even what they do with those extra decades will all need to change. Oh and by the way, are you committed to spending an extra 100 years with your spouse? I am, dear. 😘

🎖️AI and Global Power: The Geopolitical Arms Race

Finally, and I’m really not trying to freak people out with this article, but we can’t talk about the implications of AI without talking about how it has the potential to completely shake-up the global geopolitical order.

The AI arms race is already in full swing between the U.S., China, and other major powers. It appears that we’ve got every reason to believe that AI dominance is going to mean military dominance, economic dominance, and ultimately, control over the future of global power structures.

How will AI manifest in the world of geopolitical conflict?

We’re talking about AI-powered military strategy, autonomous weapons making split-second battlefield decisions, cyber warfare that happens at speeds no human could ever keep up with, and intelligence analysis that can predict geopolitical shifts before they happen. If one country pulls way ahead in AI, that could be the deciding factor in who holds global power in the coming decades.

I’ve been diving deep into this lately, and the U.S. is definitely waking up to the stakes. Companies like Palantir and Anduril are already working on cutting-edge AI for defense, and policymakers are realizing they can’t afford to fall behind. If you want to go deeper into this, a16z has done some great podcasts on the topic, one of which I’ve included in the content diet section below.

📈Exponential Human Progress

All of this reminds me of Tim Urban’s famous graphic below. I’ve shared this before but it feels more timely than ever. Human brains cannot comprehend exponential change, yet that is exactly what it appears we’ll be facing in the years ahead.

So What Should You Do?

Try the tools. There are a lot of great AI models and tools out there that are perfect for general use cases, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others. My recommendation is that you pick or two and start playing with them. The best way to understand AI isn’t just to read about it—it’s to actually use these tools and see firsthand what they’re capable of.
Learn, learn, learn: I’m listing my sources below. Maybe these will resonate with you, maybe they won’t. But find some podcasts or videos or authors you like and follow along. It’s actually super interesting to follow how fast it’s all developing.
Teach your kids how to use AI. This includes schools. Let’s not put our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist. That would be like not teaching them how to use the internet for research and torturing them by not allowing calculators. Our kids’ lives are going to be completely transformed by this technology — they might as well get smart about using it.
Be proactive, not reactive. Generally speaking, I’d say doing something is better than doing nothing. This wave is coming whether we’re ready or not. I’m kind of sick of the meme “if AI doesn’t replace you, someone using AI will” but it is kind of true. So… ya know… time to take some action.

Final Thought: Buckle Up

They say “may you live in interesting times.” I think that’s the very definition of what we’re living through and what we’re about to live through. So, buckle up. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Oh and by the way, do you think I wrote this article, or AI? Would it change how you felt about it either way? Something to consider.🤔

Have a great week,

Greg (or Greg’s AI assistant)