"The gap between what I've been saying and what is actually happening has gotten far too big."
Your job: close the gap between perception and reality every single day.
This is not a drill, not a fad, not hype. The technology works, it improves predictably, and the wealthiest institutions in history are committing trillions. Act like it.
If you tried AI in 2023 or early 2024 and were unimpressed — that's ancient history. The models today are unrecognizable. Never evaluate the present with yesterday's experience.
The people who will struggle most are the ones who refuse to engage — who dismiss it as a fad, who feel using AI diminishes their expertise, who assume their field is immune. No field is.
Don't treat AI like Google. Feed it your actual work. Give it the hard stuff. The people getting ahead aren't using AI casually — they're automating what used to take hours.
The specific tools don't matter as much as the muscle of learning new ones quickly. Get comfortable being a beginner repeatedly. Adaptability is the only durable advantage.
The person who walks into a meeting and says "I used AI to do this analysis in an hour instead of three days" is going to be the most valuable person in the room. Not eventually. Right now.
— Matt Shumer