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The Human Moat: Riding the Delta (Δ) in the Great AI Rearchitecture

What you are about to read might be the most unsettling—and necessary—thing you read about your career this year. It cuts against the grain of simplified narratives and offers a dose of reality about the monumental economic transformation we are entering. This 6th episode (of the “Navigating the Future with AI” series) is not just another article about AI. It is your personal GPS for navigating the Great Rearchitecture. Within it is a detailed plan designed to demystify what is truly happening, helping you to navigate the coming challenges while seizing the profound opportunities they create. It is your blueprint for moving from a position of uncertainty to one of relevance and power in the post-AI economy.

Business & Tech leaders, economists, and thinkers are all forecasting a worldwide shift, and the ground is already trembling. The common fear is one of simple replacement—that millions of workers will be made redundant by a new wave of artificial intelligence. While this fear is understandable, it misinterprets the present danger. The story is far more complex and has already begun.

The Great Reallocation of Capital: Understanding the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

The Great Rearchitecture that is reshaping our professional world isn’t happening in a vacuum. It is being driven by a powerful, underlying financial current: The Great Reallocation of Capital.

At its core, this reallocation stems from a fundamental choice I outlined in the first article of this “Navigating the Future” series (Digital Augmentation). Does a leader use AI as a manpower divider—achieving the same output with fewer people—or as a productivity multiplier, using the same workforce to accomplish vastly more? The layoffs we are witnessing suggest many are choosing the former.

AI Divider or Multiplier

It’s a strategic crossroads where we see leaders diverging. The current wave of layoffs suggests many are choosing the former. However, a few forward-thinking leaders are charting the alternative path. A prime example is Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke, who, in a widely circulated memo, instructed his company to restrain hiring and instead embrace a new default: every employee must first exhaust AI as a solution before new headcount is considered. This is the productivity multiplier in action: transforming their own jobs to increase their capabilities and, by extension, the company’s.

And yet, this choice often ignores a fundamental truth I have observed in every organization I have worked with: there are no empty backlogs. There is always 10x more work to be done than the current team can handle, with ambitions that would require 100x the effort. A substantial reservoir of potential value lies untapped.

Just consider the functions often treated as cost centers—quality assurance, cybersecurity, compliance, and even employee wellness. With AI as a multiplier, these can be transformed into powerful market differentiators. A company’s decision here reveals its true vision: a defensive focus on short-term cost-cutting versus an ambitious pursuit of long-term value creation.

You have seen the headlines. Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Salesforce, and Meta have all made significant cuts to their workforce. But the reduction is not, as many assume, primarily because AI is already there to replace workers like engineers, designers, marketers, HR, compliance specialists, and, proportionally, managers. The reality is that these layoffs are an anticipation of AI’s future power.

We are witnessing a strategic, system-wide efficiency exercise. Corporations are trimming their largest operational expenditure—salaries and their associated costs—to amass immense war chests of capital. This capital is being funneled directly into the single biggest prize in modern history: the development and deployment of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and, eventually, Superintelligence. It is a frantic race, and whoever gets there first will win the game.

The contenders are clear: Google, leveraging decades of research from DeepMind and its powerful Gemini models; Meta, pushing the open-source frontier with Llama 4 and its JEPA world models; Elon Musk’s xAI and its unfiltered Grok; Anthropic’s safety-conscious Claude; and the colossal cloud platforms of Amazon and Microsoft. Underpinning this entire revolution is NVIDIA, the undisputed kingmaker providing the very infrastructure of inference with its GPUs. This is not, however, merely a Silicon Valley affair; it is a key battlefield in the techno-geopolitical power balance. China is rapidly closing the gap with formidable open-source contenders like DeepSeek‘s V3 reasoning models, Alibaba’s versatile Qwen family, and the surprise emergence of Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2, an exceptionally powerful agentic model. Meanwhile, Europe is striving for technological sovereignty with champions like France’s Mistral AI, which has gained significant traction by offering a powerful, open-weight alternative, followed by Aleph Alpha in Germany. This fierce global cycle of investment and innovation creates an unavoidable truth: intelligence itself is becoming a manufactured resource, destined to become hyper-reliable for executing complex tasks. And the disruption is not limited to knowledge work; Amazon’s deep investment in robotics signals a parallel transformation for physical labor.

This high-speed revolution, however, is largely a Big Tech phenomenon. The other 99% of the economy is not there yet. For most companies, the reality is far more challenging. This isn’t theoretical. In my own journey leading AI adoption in the banking sector—an industry I know very well—I witnessed the immense difficulty firsthand. It took a full year of relentless effort, starting with stemming the foundations of our AI-driven transformation from the Technology Office—aligning our most powerful change engines of Enterprise Architecture, Engineering, and Innovation—while simultaneously using the momentum from public AI discussions to help secure buy-in, engaging with the local tech ecosystem, and rallying a great team of curious, knowledgeable, and innovative people to push in the same direction and prove the value. And what I consistently see, whether in discussions with global consulting firms, specialized service providers, or businesses large and small, is a recurring, critical gap. And what I consistently see—whether in discussions with global consulting firms, specialized service providers, or businesses large and small—is a recurring, critical gap. And what I consistently see—whether in discussions with global consulting firms, specialized service providers, or businesses large and small—is a recurring, critical gap. This isn’t just my observation; it’s a reality confirmed by a major Microsoft and LinkedIn study, which found that while a commanding 79% of leaders feel AI adoption is critical to remaining competitive, a staggering 60% of them state that their company lacks a clear vision and plan to implement it. This disconnect highlights that most organizations simply lack the strong technological leadership and prepared workforce to manage such a transformation.

This gap is creating a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. The belief in AI’s future profitability is compelling companies to lay off staff now to fund AI investment, which in turn accelerates the creation of the very technology that will make those roles redundant later. The engine of this prophecy is the eternal drive for shareholder value. And make no mistake—as an investor in the stock market, that engine is partially driven by you.

Be Aware of and Leverage the Delta (Δ)

Do you feel it? That persistent sense, ever since you were a teenager, that whatever the direction, life and society were always demanding more?

  • More study to get a better job.
  • More work to get a better salary.
  • More exercise on a regular basis just to stay in shape.
  • More training during your job to remain compliant and try to stay ahead.

Not only that, have you noticed that whatever you do, there is a rampant system that constantly pushes the rate of change itself? Like inflation that drives prices up, requiring higher salaries or forcing you to lower your living standards. Or the price of housing that keeps climbing, so you have a hard time buying your house—always hoping a better opportunity will come later, which never does, because when prices are low, mortgage rates are high. Your job is always requiring new skills because some technology or method is no longer efficient enough, or not trendy anymore—like the shift from Waterfall to Agile that suddenly rendered a Prince 2 certification seemingly obsolete. And why is everything about AI now? You feel you barely understood Crypto and Blockchain.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call the Delta (Δ), inspired by the mathematical symbol representing the function of change.

The Delta is always on. It can never be turned off. It is not a bug; it is a feature of our modern world, hardwired into the very dynamics of market economies and the core of human psychology. We all want a better life, a higher standard of living, and we operate in a competitive environment of businesses whose primary reason for existing is to grow. Therefore, you have a choice. You can resist the Delta and be broken by it, or you can accept it. Embrace it. Change your perspective on it, and learn to ride the wave. You must ride it until we, as a global society, reach a point—through a provoked agreement or a catastrophe—where we decide that the Delta can only push the human psyche and nations as a whole so far.

Your Blueprint for Lasting Value in the New Economy

Many leaders look at this disruption and immediately jump to solutions like Universal Basic Income (UBI). Let me be unequivocally clear on where I stand: while I hold that unconditional support for those left without work is a fundamental pillar of a humane society, my critique of UBI is that it acts as a patch on a structural fracture. It addresses the symptom—a lack of income—while ignoring the deeper, coming crisis of agency and purpose. Furthermore, it completely sidesteps the great economic equation of our time: the widening disconnect between the effort a task requires, the value that work creates, and the way it is ultimately remunerated. It fosters dependency when the strategic imperative must be to cultivate autonomy.

The true path forward is not merely to distribute the spoils of this technological revolution, but to democratize the very means of its creation. The superior strategy is empowerment through universal access to the foundational tools of the new economy. This means powerful open-source AI and cheap, abundant computing, delivered as a utility service as fundamental and reliable as electricity or the telephone network. This is the architecture for genuine self-sovereignty, the preservation of dignity, and the creation of true equality of opportunity. After all, this new form of intelligence was trained on the collective data of humanity. Why, then, shouldn’t the tool itself be given back to us all?

That is the ideal, but you operate in the now. The Great Reallocation is already reshaping your reality, so while we strive for that future, you must secure your place in the present. This starts with an *upgrade* in how you view yourself.

Your survival and success hinge on a single, powerful concept: you must productize your craft and your uniqueness. This is no longer just advice for freelancers or entrepreneurs; it is the new imperative for anyone who is employed and wants to remain so.

In my work building and running businesses, I have come to a critical realization: the framework for launching a successful venture, which I codified in the AMASE Startups method, is no longer just for startups. It has become the operating manual for the individual. The battlefield has changed, and the strategies that build resilient companies are now the very same strategies that must build a resilient career.

Consider how each dimension now applies directly to you:

  • Your Personal Operating System (The Business Dimension): This is your strategic self. How do you operate? What is your unique value proposition, your personal business model that you bring into the larger organization? This is your architecture for creating value.
  • Your Craft as a Product (The Product Dimension): This is where you manage your unique expertise with the discipline of a product manager. It is the sum of your evolving competencies, your mastery of technology, and the tangible quality of your work. In this new market, your craft is the product on offer, and you must be relentless in its upgrades and iterations.
  • Your Cultural Signature (The Culture Dimension): This is the unique environment you initiate through your perspective, personality, speech, and actions. It is the set of principles that governs your work and interactions, creating a powerful and singular element of your moat that attracts those who resonate with your way of being.
  • Your Signal in the Noise (The Visibility Dimension): This is your personal brand, your discoverability. In a world saturated with information, how do you broadcast your value? It is your network, your reputation, your documented successes—your ability to be found by those who need your unique solution.
  • Your Economic Sovereignty (The Finance Dimension): This is your financial autonomy. It is your understanding of the economic value you generate, your skill in negotiating your worth, and your strategy for building financial independence beyond a simple paycheck.

Let this paradigm shift settle in, for it is the new law of professional gravity. The rule is simple: You are not an employee. You are a sovereign enterprise.

The Urgency of This New Reality

Why is embracing this shift feels so urgent? Because it presents you with a stark choice, a decisive fork in your professional destiny.

On one path, you become the architect of your own value, running your career with the discipline and foresight of a competitive business. You understand that your competition is not only between people, but with a holistically transformative technology that is redefining the very rules of the game.

The other path is one of passive resistance and inaction. It is the path where you undergo the pressure of assimilation. On this path, your complex cognitive skills are not just devalued; they are disaggregated—broken down into autonomous, independent units of work ready to be executed by artificial intelligence. Your holistic expertise is commoditized into a collection of tasks, becoming the new blue-collar labor of the information age. On this path, you become a cog in a system, pressured by other humans who are themselves obsessed with cost efficiency and keeping the OPEX down. In their world, you cease to be a strategic asset and become an adjustable variable in an Excel formula.

This is not a distant threat. It is the acceleration of an existing dehumanization. While this mindset only represents a fraction of corporate culture, it is a powerful and growing one. And for the first time, this new paradigm gives you the power to consciously outmaneuver it.

Your Immediate Action Plan: The Four Pillars & Three Habits

To become the architect of your own value, you must build your enterprise of one on four foundational pillars, reinforcing them with three non-negotiable habits.

Pillar 1: Evolve into the T-Shaped Orchestrator

The future does not belong to the shallow generalist—the “jack of all trades, master of none.” That model is obsolete. The new baseline for relevance is the T-shaped professional. This is an individual who grounds their broad, cross-functional knowledge (the horizontal bar of the T) in at least one pillar of deep, specialized expertise (the vertical stem of the T).

This distinction is important. As AI rapidly commoditizes generic, student-level knowledge, it effectively levels the playing field for anyone without a defensible specialization. Your deep expertise is the anchor that gives you the gravity and perspective to manage the broader landscape. It is the backbone that allows you to become an effective Orchestrator.

Your value will no longer be defined by a single, siloed skill, but by your capacity to manage a portfolio of outcomes by conducting a symphony of specialized intelligences. You will lead hybrid teams where highly specialized human experts work in concert with a new class of digital colleague: the hyper-efficient AI Agent. The power lies not in doing, but in orchestrating from a position of deep knowledge.

Imagine you are leading a project to launch a new IT application. Your role is that of the central conductor. You will:

  • Deploy a marketing agent to run a dynamic and targeted social media campaign.
  • Task an adversarial AI to act as your “red team,” relentlessly probing your application for security vulnerabilities.
  • Direct another agent to instantly construct a perfectly formatted product sheet from complex technical specifications.
  • And assign yet another to build and manage a customer survey and feedback system.

This role requires more than just project management; it demands a holistic understanding of the entire value chain—from customer journey to final delivery.

The Elite Advantage: Evolving to the PI-Shaped (Π)

For those who wish not just to thrive but to gain a truly dominant position in the post-AI economy, achieving a T-shape is the most decisive milestone. Yet, there is a higher level of evolution that confers an almost insurmountable advantage: becoming a Π-shaped (Pi-shaped) professional.

As I’ve detailed in my work on identifying rare talent, a Π-shaped professional builds on two deep pillars of specialization—for instance, one in a business domain like finance and another in a technology domain like data science. What gives this structure its immense power is the arch connecting these pillars: a mastery of an interdisciplinary practice, such as Enterprise Architecture and Project Management, which enables them to synthesize disparate fields into a single, coherent vision.

These individuals have a natural head start in the new economy. They are already wired to be the nexus, the strategic hub that can translate deep business needs into complex technological solutions, making them the ultimate Orchestrators. This is the aspirational path for those determined to lead.

Pillar 2: Build Your Moat on Experience, EQ & Artistry

As AI commoditizes IQ-based tasks, your human essence becomes your greatest differentiator.

  • The Emotional Quotient (EQ) Moat: This is your ability to collaborate, inspire, and add to a team’s cohesion. Destructive, selfish behaviors will become terminal liabilities.
  • The Artistic Factor: Your unique creative voice—your aesthetic sense, your storytelling, your capacity for original expression—is a beacon of distinction in a world of uniformity.
  • Your Personal Intellectual Property (IP): This is your most critical asset. It is the sum of your unique methods, success recipes, custom templates, and strategic frameworks forged from your direct experience and “battle scars.”

These elements combine to create your ultimate moat: The Experience.

A few years ago, Wouter Blokdijk, an eminent Architect who used to lead the Architecture Studio and ACOM—an event for and by the vibrant architect and engineer communities at ING—gave a memorable presentation about the power of “Stages.” It stuck with me. The power wasn’t only about the immense effort and the meaning of giving others a platform to express themselves, tell their story, and share knowledge. It wasn’t just about creating a platform that could be standardized. It was about the power to make experiences possible—experiences that touch both the rational and the emotional sides of our brain. This made me realize that Experience is the ultimate moat in the age of AI.

The Experience is what sets you apart from every other player on the market. We all know we need a smartphone to manage our lives, so why do we get so emotionally tense throwing arguments between a Samsung, an iPhone, a Google phone, or a Huawei? You’ve guessed it: the experience. You are experiencing a different feeling, a different dialog with the company and its community. The brand, this collective identity, this palette of sentiment—it feels different. And that difference matters. The product design above the functions, wrapped in an experience, matters. The story, and how you tell it, matters.

Another dimension of this moat, which is profoundly human, lies in the realm of sensory value.

Think about that feeling when you enter a French bakery. You are welcomed warmly by the “boulangère,” and immediately enveloped by a symphony of smells—the crisp baguette, the buttery “pain au chocolat,” the sweet “tarte aux pommes.” You chit-chat for a moment while ordering a sandwich made with fresh vegetables and bread straight from the oven, perhaps with a dollop of handmade mayonnaise, and you add a bag of light, sugary “chouquettes” for dessert. You say goodbye, and the whole encounter leaves you with a deep feeling of satisfaction, already anticipating your next visit.

This experience is unique, irreplaceable, and memorable. For the boulangère, the bakery is her “Stage.”

Her expertise lies in taste and scent, but the principles are universal—the touch and feel of a bespoke garment, the carefully curated ambiance of a store, the soul of high-end gastronomy. These are innovations that make sense primarily from human to human. Of course, AI can assist in the research and production of these things, but it cannot replace the human perspective required to truly understand them. Because ultimately, to empathize, communicate, sell, and bring value in the sensory world, you need the one thing an AI will never possess: a human body and the lived experience that comes with it.

Pillar 3: Embrace Entrepreneurship

The traditional career ladder (including the middle management layer) is being challenged. The future belongs to the entrepreneur, and this identity now takes many forms.

  • It can be the ‘solopreneur,’ a sovereign agent leveraging their unique expertise in the open market.
  • It can be the ‘founder,’ who rallies a team to build a new company from the ground up.
  • And critically, it can be the ‘intrapreneur’—the employee who acts as an agent of change, architecting new ventures and driving innovation from within the walls of their existing organization.

Whichever path you choose, the underlying mindset is the same: it is about proactively creating and capturing value, not just fulfilling a pre-defined role. It is about building constructive solutions that push your nation, society, and humanity forward.

While this path has traditionally involved navigating complex administration, the very forces driving this new economy are lowering the barriers to entry. The proof lies in the massive capital flowing not just to the tech titans, but to a new generation of agile, visionary startups. In Europe, for instance, France’s Mistral AI has mounted a formidable challenge to the US giants, raising over €600 million by providing powerful open-weight AI models and proving that strategic innovation can attract world-class investment. Meanwhile, UK-based Wayve is revolutionizing transportation, securing over $1 billion in a landmark funding round to build ’embodied AI’ for truly autonomous vehicles that can learn and adapt to any environment.

This lowering of barriers isn’t just financial; it’s profoundly technological. The advent of Generative AI and Augmented Coding (also known as Vibe Coding) is ushering in a no-code revolution. Building websites, applications, and other kinds of software is no longer the exclusive domain of specialist coders. Instead, you can architect solutions using natural language prompts in your own language. Pioneering platforms like Replit, Bolt.new, and Firebase.studio are taking this even further, abstracting away the complexities of the backend by managing your infrastructure for you.

Considering an application of moderate complexity, traditional barriers are evaporating. Your imagination, your focus, and your available time are now the primary constraints on what you can create.

Pillar 4: Be a Discoverer

Research is hot, trending, and now acknowledged as a major instrument of geopolitical soft power.

nature index 2024

The new global currency is not just capital; it is research talent, with nations actively competing to attract and retain the world’s sharpest minds. Look no further than the race for doctorates, where China now graduates more STEM PhDs annually than the United States, creating a seismic shift in the global talent landscape. This arms race for talent is mirrored in the explosive output of their work. 

This trend is not a matter of debate; it is a statistical reality, quantified with stunning clarity by the Nature Index 2025. The report confirms that China now decisively leads the world in high-quality research output, ahead of the US, Germany, the UK, and Japan. But the real story is in the momentum: China’s contribution surged by an incredible +17.4% in a single year (from 2023 to 2024). To put its lead into perspective, China’s output of high-quality publications is now over 5,343 points higher than the second-place United States and more than 26,714 points ahead of third-place Germany.

The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI’s 2025 report, for instance, highlights this exponential growth, showing that the number of AI publications has more than doubled since 2010, demonstrating a relentless acceleration of discovery.

This academic explosion has a practical, even more chaotic, counterpart. Consider the number of AI models published on Hugging Face, the de facto “super-marketplace” for the global AI community. As of today, the platform’s model count has skyrocketed, adding nearly one million new models in just the past nine months (1898890 in July 2025). It is a cognition explosion, happening in real-time.

This macro-trend finds its corporate manifestation in a “war for brains” raging between Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft. The simple act of recruitment has evolved into a high-stakes talent transfer market akin to that for FIFA and NBA stars, with compensation packages reaching into the hundreds of millions. Consider that the deals for elite AI researchers now exist in the same stratosphere as Kylian Mbappé’s estimated €320 million with Real Madrid across five seasons or Jaylen Brown’s landmark five-year, $304 million contract with the Boston Celtics.
Look no further than Microsoft’s 2024 deal to hire Mustafa Suleyman and the majority of his Inflection AI team—an unconventional “acqui-hire” valued at over $1 billion when accounting for licensing and other fees. This move was mirrored in mid-2025, when Meta poached Alexander Wang from Scale AI as if capturing a Mythical Pokémon—exceptionally rare, strategically crucial, and emblematic of a deeper ambition—to lead their newly formed ‘Superintelligence’ team, as part of a broader strategic investment involving a $14.3 billion (49%) stake in Scale AI. In both instances, these were not simple talent acquisitions; they were strategic investments in the very capacity for future breakthroughs and driving the “road to Artificial SuperIntelligence (ASI)”.

This dynamic extends far beyond just AI. It is the same in healthcare, with bio-engineers and researchers in genomics developing tools to revolutionize health. It is the same in defense and even in foundational science with the race for quantum computing. The competition for highly qualitative minds—people able to work in cutting-edge research teams—is the real invisible war. The goal of these teams is to produce the papers, the patents, and the commercial intellectual property that create a true, unassailable competitive advantage—a quantum leap of insight that remains, for now, far beyond the creative potency of any AI. To position yourself here, among the discoverers, is to place yourself at the highest and most secure echelon of the new economy.

Yet, even this moat is not eternal. We must acknowledge the stated ambitions of leaders like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who openly seek to build AI models capable of making novel scientific discoveries themselves. We are not there yet, but it is a frontier to be watched with active vigilance.

The Three Foundational Habits

Acting on this framework requires discipline. These three habits are not just suggestions; they are the new requirements for professional survival and relevance.

But before we detail them, let’s observe how the future of work is already unfolding through clear, undeniable trends:

  • The Normalization of Personal AI: Personal AI assistants are rapidly becoming the norm in our lives. For our ten-year-old children, growing up with an AI will be as natural as it was for millennials to grow up with a smartphone.
  • The Incremental UI Absorption: Specialized application interfaces will gradually be absorbed by these personal AI assistants. Through API integration, advanced protocols for context-sharing (MCP) and agent-to-agent communication (A2A), these assistants will be able to reason across multiple applications and data sources, becoming a single, conversational front-end for our digital lives.
  • The Persistence of Unreliability: Despite advances like web search grounding, thinking models, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Large Language Models (LLM) still hallucinate. We must remember that their output is a synthesis of other humans’ content, which is not the same as verified, truthful fact.
  • The Law of Exponential Progress: The technology is only getting better, faster, and more potent. The performance gap between 2020’s GPT-3 and today’s state-of-the-art models is not just an iteration; it’s a light-year leap in capability.

Considering this new reality, I invite you to strengthen your sovereign agency with these four foundational practices:

  1. Sovereign Critical Thinking: This is the essential safeguard. You must cultivate a healthy skepticism towards AI-generated content and, more importantly, towards the claims of people and enterprises leveraging AI at scale—especially those operating in the “High-Risk AI” category defined by frameworks like the EU AI Act. This is about preventing lazy reasoning and refusing to outsource your judgment. The “how” of a process is often easier to challenge than the “what” of a stated fact, yet to build a true capability, you need to master both. Honing your critical thinking makes you a more discerning user of AI, which in turn increases the velocity of your own training and gives you an edge faster than those who accept its output uncritically.
  2. Continuous Learning: This is paramount because the Delta never stops. You must leverage modern tools to your advantage, using AI itself as an engine for comprehension. Dive into platforms like ChatGPT and the information streams on X to accelerate your learning and keep pace with a world that refuses to stand still. This is your first line of defense against obsolescence.
  3. Continuous Practice: This is where theory is forged into capability. It is not enough to think you know how something is done; you must know how to do it through direct, relentless application. Practice is how you accumulate the concrete examples, the case studies, and the definitive experience that form the bedrock of your personal IP. It is through doing that you gain the tangible proof of your value.
  4. Engineered Serendipity: In a world overflowing with noise, you cannot simply wait to be found; you must engineer the conditions for opportunity to come to you. This isn’t about shouting louder than everyone else; that is a defective and inefficient strategy. True serendipity is engineered by building a believable value proposition rooted in the tangible assets you created through practice. It is the deliberate combination of your sovereign thinking, your continuous learning, and your proven experience that creates a gravitational pull for the most meaningful opportunities, allowing you to be “picked” when it matters most.

In a world that seeks to commoditize your talent into a line item in an Excel formula, becoming the architect of your own enterprise is the ultimate expression of sovereign agency and the only way to truly ride the Delta.

But the Delta, as powerful as it is, is not the ultimate source. It is probably the most visible expression of a deeper, more fundamental law of our hyper-connected world: The Law of the Equilibrium Imperative. In a future article, we will dive into this foundational principle and its one immutable rule: a system will always find a new equilibrium, and you can either be a willing architect of it or a casualty of the adjustment.

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Agents Artificial Intelligence Business Business Strategy Copilot Information Technology Innovation Microsoft

⭐ Microsoft brings “Everyday AI” to over 320 millions MS 365 users!

Yesterday, I received a notification that my Microsoft 365 subscription now includes MS Copilot 365 AI credits.

It’s a smart move to integrate AI tools more broadly, especially when considering that Microsoft 365 has over 320 millions daily active users globally (as of 2024), and more than 2.3 millions companies using the “office” productivity suite.

According to the FAQ, the Personal and Family plans contains 60 AI credits.

What’s an AI credit? I quote: “A credit is counted each time you specifically request a Copilot or equivalent AI services action, such as generating text, a table, or an image.”

My experience with Copilot 365 so far has shown incredible productivity boosts in MS Teams and Excel. However, PowerPoint still feels like it needs refinement.

I’m very keen to explore specialized versions of Copilot like the Project Management Copilot to enhance team efficiency further.

Have you tried MS 365 Copilot?

What are your experiences with MS Copilot so far?

Let’s share our experiences.

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Artificial Intelligence Business Businesses ChatGPT Engineering EU AI Act GPT4 GPT4o Information Technology Innovation Llama Meta OpenAI Regulation Technology

✨ Llama 3.1, Meta and the EU AI Act – Where are the areas of synergy between innovation and regulation?

img 20240727 wa00033116017234937086313
Llama 3.1 AI model

Llama 3.1, a 405 Billion parameters model, has just been released by Meta.

It comes with increased performances. Some early tests make it comparable to “GPT4o“.

A few perks:

  • Still #opensource
  • 128K token context window
  • Improved Multilingual Support. Meta is a leader in multilanguage models.
  • Comes with a new security and safety tool for advanced moderation and control mechanisms to ensure safe interactions.
  • Improved capabilities for creating synthetic data.

I find the partner ecosystem, including NVIDIA, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Groq supporting Llama already quite impressive (see picture).

But also…

While the EU AI Act has been officially published on July 12, 2024, in the EU official journal, to come into force on August 2, 2024, Meta made worrisome news for the #artificialintelligence open source community.

In a nutshell, Meta will withhold the rollout of multimodal AI models in the EU region until the regulatory rules are clarified.

The EU AI Act contains explicit rules for foundation models, also known as “general-purpose AI models”, amongst the following:

  • Article 51: Classification of general-purpose AI models as general-purpose #AI models with systemic risk
  • Article 53: Obligations for providers of general-purpose AI models
  • Article 55: Obligations for providers of general-purpose AI models with systemic risk
  • Article 56: Codes of practice

Let’s hope we will find a way to balance #innovation and #regulation.

🫡

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Technology Artificial Intelligence Business Innovation personal development Questioning Self development Wisdom

The Art of Questioning: How One Well-Crafted Question Can Significantly Improve Your Life (and Everyone Around You)

“There is no dumb question, only dumb answers”

This is what my teacher told me when I was in primary school. This simple yet powerful sentence cancelled my fear of looking stupid when asking questions whenever I felt the need to.

Today, in my leadership position, I regularly ask questions for various reasons. The primary motive is that leading within the realm of excellence requires understanding the situation and bridging it with objectives you must reach. Then, it is about delivering a simple message, built on the why, how and what so that your peers understand the mission and have all the elements to make it happen. Everything happens for a reason, my responsibility lies in exposing the reason, taking decisions, and consequently triggering actions.

The second motive is that I need to understand the depth of systems and I simply LOVE acquiring knowledge. This fuels my motivation. It is like filling an endless toolbox that helps me to invent, build, compose, and innovate. I guess it is the scientist and the engineer parts in me. And I am still curious about life as a 4-year-old kid. All innovation starts with the same question: ‘How do we solve this problem?’ This question launches startups and is the mother of all technological advancements.

The sentence I use the most is « I don’t understand, can you explain, please? ». it is about being aware there are a variety of things to discover, then there are many different points of view, outmatched by ways of thinking. What fascinates me the most is when people share their experiences. I am also conscious that my interlocutor’s sentences and my very own understanding are two sides of the conversation. The point is, that it’s not always smooth communication.

It is about finding the right channel and angle.

It is about finding the right tempo and timing.

In this situation, I use the almighty Question Mark, a weapon created eons ago as powerful as Thoth’s Caduceus.

“I am just a child who has never grown up. I keep asking these ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer “

Stephen Hawking

Yes, the question mark, a single-character sign, possesses this power. Just like a math unary operator, it is a linguistic operator that empowers you with multiple abilities. And here they are:

Expanding knowledge by the means of asking a question. The brain has the habit of filling the gaps of ignorance using analytical skills, an association of concepts, and similarities. While it works more often than one thinks, it is inaccurate, even misleading sometimes. By gaining more awareness about this innate mechanism, we tend to cover gaps by following the foundational maxim, “If you don’t know, ask”. The Bible said it in another way “Ask, and thou shalt receive.”.

Assert or confirm a statement by seeking a true or false answer, increasing the force of your internal knowledge system. English has this nice reverse interrogation formulation where the auxiliary and the pronoun are inverted. For example: “The dog was cleaned, wasn’t it?” or “The Internet is the most powerful network, isn’t it?”. Another technique consists of using “be” as a tool for opening the field of possibilities for answers, meaning one can respond by confirming or infirming with a piece of complementary information. For example: “Was it Descartes who once said ‘I think, therefore I am’?”. Here, I tend to see the question mark as an invitation to conclude a contract of trust: my understanding is acknowledged; therefore, I trust your words. 

It forces action through suggestions. When one says “You are going to do it, aren’t you?”, you give that push that will trigger the intended cascade of events.

You can use a question mark to invite someone to do something or join you. For instance, “If you have time, would you like to have dinner tonight?”. This is a gentle way to request someone to do something of their own will.

It demonstrates your genuine interest in what someone is saying or thinking. For example, when someone asks a question during a debate, it constitutes a trigger indicating a need to be filled or a bond to be made. It is also an expression of interest in what she or he could say. In this regard, it is an invitation to participate in the idea exchange.

Did you know your questions are so valuable they have built business behemoths?

In 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google. Interestingly, the original name was “Googol,” but, due to a mistake, the company was registered as “Google.” A googol is a number with a hundred zeros.

Fast forward to today, and Google is the undisputed king of search engines, holding a 91% market share. There are 85 billion queries per month on Google in 2024.

Notably, the second most popular website is YouTube, which also relies on finding the right video based on your searches and attention. Google, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, X, and TikTok all share a common revenue source: advertising. Google popularized keyword bidding for ads: the more directly a keyword is associated with a common search, the more expensive it becomes. That’s how your questions acquire monetary value and become the fuel of social media super-algorithms.

Now that we are talking about money, it reminds me of the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. There is a striking example of how the question “How can I buy this house” instead of the affirmation “I cannot buy this house”, shifts the way your brain operates. Asking yourself the right question, rather than making an affirmation, triggers a thinking process that induces self-motivation. Facts are static until they get shaken; questions are the beginning of a story. They represent the spark.

While teaching my children how to use the Internet safely, I have rediscovered the most powerful effect of the question mark: the power to plant the seed of an idea with a drop of water, and the new beginning of the dark ages. It is the rise of click baits and misleading titles in online newspapers that makes me wonder “Why do people click?”, “Why do I want to click?”, “What is the true intention of this article? ». By turning an idea into a question, there is no assertion.  This is a state where neither the truth nor the lie is told but induced. You express your opinion in the most open way possible, and you activate the inner functions of the human psyche. A mind will naturally try to fill gaps whenever information is missing to either decide, lead one toward a goal, or fill a knowledge hole. This process is just an innate mechanism of the brain. You should know that a lot of content is now automatically generated by artificial intelligence, designed to exploit these psychological mechanisms for traffic and revenue or to trap users with malware, which is more harmful. The intent is to hack your mental system. One must be aware of this and should always ask the question « What is the true intent of the authors ». Then, what’s the difference between convincing and manipulating?

If you have yet to see the movie Inception by Christopher Nolan, I highly suggest watching it.

By asking a question, you can present your idea gently and say, « I may be wrong, and I am open to suggestions. Let me tell you what you think ». On the positive side, when the intent is pure, it is a form of expression that is polite and smooth. It reminds me of the precepts of “Nonviolent Communication” by Marshall Rosenberg. On the negative side, you can exploit people’s minds and practice the art of manipulation. 

Questions create cues, which are powerful mechanisms to awaken your mind and provoke a reminder to act or recall a memory. I have discovered that expert project managers use this technique, either willingly or subliminally, to prompt actions and increase the likelihood that the flow of work and cadence stays high among the various actors involved in the project. Sometimes, great achievements are born from seemingly insignificant pushes.

A well-architected set of questions creates a frame of thought. This frame acts as a guide, helping you to build reasoning. This reasoning leads to other questions and decisions. Ultimately, it creates an outcome that you can use, like a design, a plan, or an analysis, learned, or taught. This set is even more powerful than a task list, even though it requires more effort. I used this technique for building the AMASE Product and Service Architecture Canvas.

Beyond questions lies the dynamics of knowledge flows.

For those familiar with hermetic principles, you’ll recognize the profound power of questions. I view questions as channels of feminine energy – not in terms of gender or sex, but as conduits drawing information, knowledge, and wisdom from one place to another. This energy is then transformed into action, thoughts, decisions, or stored as knowledge.

Consequently, speaking the truth and sharing what you know (outside of storytelling contexts) is a principle one should adhere to. To do otherwise risks poisoning minds, as discussed earlier.

Interestingly, as a question receiver, you’re invited to answer or act: essentially, to give energy. Have you ever been in a job interview? That long series of interrogations is exhausting. With this in mind, you’ll understand why the pace and sequence of questioning, followed by active listening, enhances the quality of an interview or conversation.

To push this reflection further, I see wisdom as a higher state of energy that one can maintain effortlessly. Wisdom is a dense ball of useful energy – the accumulated and structured knowledge and know-how – from which one can tap and maximize benefits. The wise can passively nurture and grow this body of wisdom like a supernova. This is the path of the Sage.

TED Talk‘s motto is “Ideas worth spreading.” We’ve discussed how to uncover such ideas, but an equally important question is: how do we spread specific pieces of knowledge that are worth sharing?

Once again, questions are tools. I know an executive who employs this tool skillfully to align their staff and spotlight individuals who deserve recognition, especially in front of other executives. Questions spread easily like ideas because they open mental gates and reposition worldviews by offering new perspectives. The expression “Hmm, I never thought about that” often originates from a well-posed question!

The 2nd dimension of questioning

“I don’t want to be a didactic voice. I like to ask more questions than I answer, just to get people thinking and to make it safe to access art”

Hannah Gadsby

People use a secondary dimension as we speak to fuel the question marks’ superpower: the tone. The tone gives more depth, and more information, to communication.

A tone that ends with a high pitch will induce emptiness, which is to be filled with knowledge

A tone ending with a low pitch will induce completeness almost filled with willpower

It can be warm and calm so that your audience has fertile ground for inner reflection and trigger a deep-thinking process

Another way is to use a more seductive tone to induce something without saying it. Like the previous superpower, it is to be used with genuine intention because it makes people believe something. Therefore, it is better to be true; otherwise, you are just abusing someone’s dreams or weaknesses.

Finally, one can use a more threatening tone. The purpose of this is to express a « one last chance ». Your counterpart is put in the corner, and she or he will have to make a choice, for which the result may be costly if it is the wrong choice. As the former heavyweight boxing champion, Mike Tyson, said: « Everybody has a plan until he gets punched in the face ».

I realized that, like laughter, tone signifies the same meaning in most languages. Perhaps the truth lies here: sound imbued with emotion is the universal language, don’t you think?

To wrap up, the Art of Questioning can be synthesized into five key aspects:

  1. The art of quickly and clearly mapping the realms of the unknown and unclear, while making their boundaries tangible for everyone.
  2. The art of unearthing the truth.
  3. The art of carving an idea to absolute clarity.
  4. The art of guiding, influencing, and (unfortunately) manipulating.
  5. The art of mastering the flow of knowledge.

Can we consider questioning a science? I asked myself this and discovered there is, indeed, a field of research dedicated to ‘questioning,’ as well as a nascent discipline named ‘Questionology.’.

With that, I’ll leave you with one final piece of advice: With practice and curiosity, awareness leads to wisdom. Use the question mark’s power wisely.

🫡

Yannick HUCHARD

Categories
Artificial Intelligence Automation Business Business Strategy Engineering Innovation Robots Strategy Technology Technology Strategy

Update on Tesla’s Optimus #Robot – it is progressing fast

Tesla’s Optimus Robot learning from humans

The most impressive part is the technique employed by the Tesla team for accelerating the robot’s dexterity: the robot physically learns from human actions. 

Now, let’s step back and analyse Tesla’s master plan here:

(Putting on my business tech strategy goggles) 

1. Tesla builds electric cars augmented with software programmability.

2. Tesla provides an electric grid as a service.

3. Tesla builds gigafactories that maximize the automation of car manufacturing. Almost every single part of the pipeline is robotized and optimized for speed of production.

4. Tesla builds Powerwalls (by providing energy storage, it also creates a decentralized power station network).

5. Tesla brings autonomous driving (FSD) to Tesla cars. Essentially, cars are now transportation robots governed by the most advanced AI fleet management system.

6. Tesla builds its own chips (FSD Chip and Dojo Chip)

7. Tesla builds its own supercomputers.

8. Tesla launches Optimus, which aims to replace the human workforce in factories and warehouses.

9. X.ai, which has recently raised $6 billion, X’s supposedly “child” AI company, brings the Grok AI model trained on X/Twitter data. While you may say X data is not the best, X has a algorithm balanced with human judgment (community notes), AND the company regroups the largest set of news publishing companies. Basically, it automates curation and accuracy.

10. A version of the Grok AI model will likely power Optimus’s human-to-robot conversational interface.

11. Tesla cars will be turned into robotaxis, disrupting not only taxi companies but also Uber (the Uber/Tesla partnership may not be a coincidence), and eating into the shares of Lyft and BlaBlaCar.

12. Tesla will enter the general services business, and retail industries to offer multi-purpose usage robots – cleaning services for business offices, grocery stores, filling the workforce shortage in the catering (hotel-restaurant-bar…) industry, etc.

Tesla is not the only one moving in the “Robot Fleet Management” business. Chinese companies like BYD (EV) offer strong competition, and there are several robot startups (like Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics) racing for the pole position.

#AI #artificialintelligence #Robotics #Optimus #EV #software #EnergyStorage #Automation #powerwall #AutonomousVehicles #FSD #chips #HighPerformanceComputing #Robots #GrokAI #NLP #robotaxis #innovation #WorkforceAutomation

Categories
AR/VR Augmented Reality Innovation Mixed Reality Technology UX Virtual Reality

Apple Vision Pro – I Thought I Knew What The Metaverse Would Feel Like. I Couldn’t Be Further From The Truth.

A couple of weeks ago, I received an unusual meeting invite. It said “Test Apple Vision Pro.” I read it twice and jumped at the opportunity. I had been longing to get my hands on an AR/VR device that could make my dream idea – an augmented world (project Vmess platform) – a reality. That day was finally coming.

What better way to cap off an amazing work week at Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL) than by getting up close and personal with Apple’s groundbreaking #mixedreality marvel – the #VisionPro? Last Friday, I had the immense privilege of taking this pioneering device for a spin.

Let me be blunt: before trying the Vision Pro, I thought I had a decent idea of what the metaverse experience would be like. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. This isn’t just the future – it’s a portal to parallel universes that shattered my expectations.

The Vision Pro isn’t a smartphone replacement; it represents an entirely new frontier, a mind-bending window into the so call #metaverse. Furthermore, everything is at hands: you pinch to interact. like every Apple creation, it exudes sophistication down to the finest detail. 

The display resolution? Words fail to capture its otherworldly crispness and depth. And we’re not merely talking apps here; these are full-fledged, multi-sensory experiences that transport you to realms you thought only existed in science fiction.

Mark Zuckerberg was certainly onto something with his metaverse vision, but Apple seems poised to leapfrog everyone with this staggering delivery that must be witnessed firsthand. 

My rendezvous with the Vision Pro was more than a tech spectacle, though. It was also a heartwarming reunion with the brilliant minds at Virtual Rangers. Their #VR app portfolio is impressive, but what moved me most was “Roudy’s World” – an experience lovingly crafted to inspire hope and joy in children facing unimaginable adversity.

Immense gratitude to Matthieu Bracchetti and the entire Virtual Rangers crew, along with François Giotto, for making this future-altering experience possible. The metaverse future we yearned for? It’s already here, and it’s far grander than we ever conceived.

#augmentedreality #virtualreality #artificialintelligence #ai #digital #innovation #tech2check #digitalaugmentation