AI inflection point
Last week, I hit an inflection point – a shift in perspective that altered how I see AI, and will shape everything I do going forward.
My history with tech waves
I came of age amidst the rise of the internet and social media.
In middle school I was on AIM chat rooms. (Don’t tell my parents, but I regularly snuck into the “mature” chat rooms when nobody was watching.)
Facebook arrived on my college campus during freshman year. I joined right away, but was hesitant to share my face online.
In 2007, when a college friend showed me his first iPhone, I was skeptical. It didn’t have a keyboard and felt flimsy in my hand.
When I moved to San Francisco in 2008, the world was reeling from the real estate crash. An industry that I’d been told my entire life was stable, bedrock, had dropped precipitously.
When I was training gymnastics at Stanford University in 2012, several of the guys I practiced with were in crypto and tried to encourage me to buy. I’ve since seen three crypto boom and bust cycles.
Pattern recognition
I started Responsive Conference out of my own desire to explore the future of work, and many of these trends.
I’ve met world experts on trends that became commonplace just a few years later – remote and distributed work, diversity & inclusion, blockchain, and more.
We talked about AI on stage back in 2019! But something is different now.
Casual early adoption
I’ve been using AI in my daily work for several years.
Ten years ago in video you had to manually transcribe an interview before editing. Now our transcriptions at Zander Media can be done in seconds.
I ask ChatGPT to review my articles for structure, grammar, and semantics. I nearly always search on ChatGPT instead Google.
I’ve known AI is important, but not taken it more seriously than I did the rise of blockchain and crypto, social media, or even AOL chatrooms.
My philosophy has been that of a casual early adopter, “Oh, look! The world’s changed again. And I still need to go train my handstands.”
This one is different
Last week, I hit an inflection point, which happened for two reasons.
My girlfriend is a data scientist and through her daily work she already knows that AI is a tectonic shift.
Then, I listened to this conversation with Tyler Cowen, which I highlighted in Snafu last week.
In the interview, Tyler talked about the significance of AI, the differences between the major LLMs, and how he uses each of them. I was struck by how much I didn’t know.
I was chatting with my father over the weekend, and casually mentioned that AI was going to be the next electricity. He said, reservedly, that he might agree. I’ve since come to believe that AI represents the biggest disruption any of us have ever witnessed.
Bigger than the printing press
I believe AI is going to be bigger than social media, the internet, electricity, or the printing press.
A basic premise of Responsive.org is that the rate of change is accelerating. But just like humans aren’t very good at understanding compound interest or logarithmic growth, we aren’t good at comprehending what it means when a growth curve goes nearly straight up.
I’m not an engineer. I don’t understand machine learning, deep learning, or the math behind LLMs. And I’ve never been caught up in a hype cycle before. I wasn’t all-in on social media, even though I was there at the beginning, or crypto, even though I knew people who were.
But as a lifelong lover of books, I’ve always said that I wished I was there for the advent of the printing press. This is that moment.
My commitment
In a world that is on the verge of disaster – climate, socio-political unrest, and more – AI has the potential to be the collaborator we need to solve these issues. Equally, these tools have the potential to manipulate and destroy us.
My new commitment is to use these tools every day. In my current research of real estate, I’ve 10x my rate of learning by treating ChatGPT as a thought partner. While everything I write in Snafu will continue to be my own, I’m using these tools to hone my craft.
At Responsive Conference, people have been talking about AI on stage since 2019. But in 2025 I want to give attendees a direct taste of these tools as part of the conference experience.
We’re at the beginning of a new era. One that has the potential to be both awe-inspiring and terrifying. We’re not just building new tools – we’re building something smarter than ourselves.
How do we want to participate? How do we reinvent ourselves even faster than the tools that are learning from us? That remains for all of us to decide.
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3 things I’ve loved this week
Book I’m re-reading
Average is Over by Tyler Cowen
I’ve followed Tyler since he published Average is Over in 2011. Tyler outlines a case for why the middle of almost everything is being cut out of the middle of the market, and dedicates a chapter to chess. As a former competitive chess player, Tyler witnessed the rise of chess and computers, including the turning point when computers became better players than humans. The striking thrust of his argument, however, is that a strong human and computer team will always beat either one playing by itself. Average is Over was the book I gift most frequently for several years thereafter.
Email tool that keeps me sane
Superhuman
I get a lot of email every day – and send even more. Email is the primary way I do business. The tool I’ve been using for the last year that saves me more time and headache than any other is the email app Superhuman.
Superhuman trains you to be more effective at email through very thoughtful behavioral nudges towards using shortkeys, snippets, and other built in tools to process email faster and more thoughtfully.
Salt I love
I discovered Beautiful Briny Sea back during the pandemic, and have used their salts regularly since. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, this little company makes a variety of salt blends. Their Sultan Papadopoulos Sea Salt remains my favorite – I use it on air fried chicken, in stir fry, on eggs, and just about anywhere else that occurs to me.
Also, what a great name for a company?!
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Support Snafu
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Share Snafu - If you're enjoying Snafu, it would mean the world to me if you would share it with one person who you think would like it. What friend, co-worker, or family member comes to mind? Forward this along!
Books by Robin - I've published two books - so far! If you’re interested in learning to do a handstand, check out How to Do a Handstand. If you’re building a company or want to improve your company’s culture, read Responsive: What It Takes to Create a Thriving Organization.
Responsive Conference - This is my single big event of the year, and 2025 is already shaping up to be incredible. We have 15 speakers confirmed, and theme, fittingly, is how to "design for change."
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Until next week,
Robin
