🔥 LLMs and Leadership — Why the true revolution isn’t in what AI creates, but how it eliminates excuses for inaction and forces higher standards of execution.

🧰 Future-Proofing with AI — A career audit prompt that reveals what parts of your job are automatable, and how to stay in the top 10% of performers as AI reshapes work.

💬 The Rise of the Polymath — How generalists using AI to synthesize faster will outpace specialists, creating a new class of innovators who turn breadth into mastery.

LLMs are a truly life changing technology. It's easy to get caught up with circular debates about AI safety or hallucinations. But the real promise is that you have this oracle in your hand that can help you do almost anything.

I've incorporated using LLMs in almost every facet of my life. Now do I just copy and paste outputs for everything? Of course not. I use it as a thought partner to fully develop ideas. A no holds barred partner where you can say anything. It's also helped me execute better and faster on ideas that I have.

We don't have excuses anymore to not execute or ever have problems that truly stop us from moving forward. This has big implications in the companies we work in. If you're stuck on something, there is no excuse bringing the problem to your leader. You have an LLM. You should be able to at least bring potential solutions or a plan of action to your manager.

As I had mentioned in a prior newsletter, the gap between the high performers and everyone else will widen, in part because of LLMs and other AI capabilities. I also think expectations for general performance will increase. And we're seeing this generally in the market, with total job openings decreasing. If a graphic designer can do the work of three using AI, this changes how organizations think about strategy and future investment.

This also creates a greater divide between individual companies, and the companies that don't lean into AI will move towards irrelevancy. This is less of a "sky is falling" problem and more of a "gradually then suddenly" problem. The human brain has difficulty visualizing exponential increases, and by the team people do the train has passed.

If you're not thinking about how to make your team AI first, the window is closing.

I Dated Four AI Boyfriends — Futurist Cathy Hackl spent weeks in digital relationships with AI partners to explore where tech meets intimacy. Her takeaway? AI companions are reshaping love, empathy, and emotional labor, raising questions about what “connection” really means in a world of programmable affection. Read more →

Optery Fights Back Against Data Brokers — Your personal data is being sold thousands of times a day, and Optery is quietly building the antidote. The platform scans hundreds of data broker sites, finds where your information is listed, and automatically removes it, using AI to continuously monitor and delete new exposures. Privacy is no longer passive. Read more →

Voice AI Finds Its Voice — A.T. Kearney’s new report shows voice AI is moving from gimmick to growth engine. The tech is now driving real business outcomes in customer service, logistics, and healthcare, blending natural conversation with transactional precision. The next big UI shift? Talking to your business, not typing. Read more →

Why not use an LLM to help future proof your career? Most people ask AI what skills they need, but few ask what skills will still matter when AI can do more and more. Use this prompt to run a personal audit and identify your competitive advantage:

You are a career strategist in an AI-driven economy. Analyze my current role, skills, and habits, and tell me:

The company that makes Oreos, Mondelez, has been investing in generative AI tools to help run it's marketing. They are envisioning that it could save them up to 50% in marketing costs and would start using these tools for short TV ads.

It's a great move overall, and some of the larger line item spend is for external advertising agencies. It is also a way to start incorporating an AI first mentality in the organization. When an animation can take hundreds of thousands of dollars, why not lean into generative AI? They'll still have human in the loop to ensure alignment to the brand.

The other note in the article is the potential to speed up their entire go-to-market strategy and product development. Not only will these tools help from a cost standpoint, but they'll also speed up the time it takes to implement ads and a marketing plan. I could see this reducing entire product cycles from years to months and eventually to weeks.

I'm fascinated by history, particularly by the polymaths of society, those individuals that had deep expertise in multiple fields. Your quintessential Renaissance Man.

For most of modern history, the world rewarded specialists, the person who spent decades mastering one narrow field. But AI is reversing that trend. When large language models can surface the equivalent of years of study in hours, depth becomes accessible to anyone who knows how to ask the right questions. The people who will thrive in this new era are the polymaths: individuals who can connect ideas across disciplines, use AI to fill knowledge gaps on demand, and apply insights faster than experts locked in silos.

AI flattens the learning curve. A generalist can now dive into code, law, design, biology, or economics with an intelligent co-pilot. The edge no longer comes from knowing more. It comes from synthesizing faster. Those who can navigate multiple domains, translate between them, and spot the hidden intersections will become the new innovators and leaders. The future doesn’t belong to the smartest specialist. It belongs to the person who can turn AI’s breadth into their own depth.

-Ylan