If AI is really going to upend work as we know it,
then I must become exceptionally adaptable.
If AI is going to make many of my current skills irrelevant,
then I must keep learning new ones.
If AI is going to dramatically reshape financial markets, companies, and the way wealth is created,
then I must be careful not to build my entire life around the assumption that the economic rules of today will remain the rules of tomorrow.
If AI is going to atrophy our brains by doing more and more of our thinking for us,
then I must deliberately protect my ability to think and create space for it.
I must read. Write. Struggle with problems. Remember things. Do things the hard way sometimes simply because doing them is good for me.
If AI is going to remove human art and creativity from the world,
then I must create more of it.
I should write things nobody asked me to write. Cook something unnecessarily complicated. Build something by hand. Go somewhere beautiful. Support people who make things because they love making them.
If AI is going to concentrate enormous amounts of power in the hands of a few people and companies,
then I must maintain as much agency over my own life as I can.
If AI is instead going to create an era of global flourishing and prosperity beyond anything humans have experienced before,
then I want to live long enough to see it.
I should take care of my body. Exercise. Sleep. Eat reasonably well. Go to the doctor. Do the boring things that increase my chances of being around for whatever comes next.
If AI is going to massively expand the margins of most companies,
then I should build one or two.
If AI is going to put a robot in my house,
then I should…actually I don’t know how I feel about this at all.
If AI is going to change healthcare and medicine beyond recognition,
then, again, I would very much like to be alive for that.
If AI is going to fundamentally change how humans spend their time,
then I should get much more thoughtful about how I spend mine.
What am I actually trying to optimize for?
More money? More time? More experiences? More impact? More time with my wife? More time with my kids? Great friends? Adventure? Building something that matters?
Because there is no reason to wait for AI to force that question.
If AI is going to consume enormous amounts of energy and harm the environment,
then I should do what I can to preserve and restore the parts of the world I love.
And if AI is actually going to kill us all…
Well.
Then we better have an incredible next three years.
Go outside. Take the trip. Spend time with your children if you have them. Call your parents. Build the company. Quit the thing you hate. Tell people you love them. Make something. Take some risks. Stop delaying your life until some imaginary point when everything is finally under control.
Because AI might not kill us.
It probably (hopefully) won’t.
But something eventually will.
Which is perhaps the most useful thing all of this breathless speculation about the future can remind us of.
I have no idea exactly what AI will do.
I don’t know whether it will create abundance or destruction, make us smarter or stupider, distribute power or concentrate it, give us more time or somehow convince us to fill every newly liberated minute with even more work.
But if I genuinely believe that we are living through a period of enormous change, I don’t think the appropriate response is to sit around predicting it.
It is to live accordingly.