Digital Economy Dispatch #237 -- Thinking With AI, Not About It

Over the past few weeks, I seem to be having a recurring experience in many of my discussions with senior business leaders. While some are highly engaged and motivated by AI, far too often they still seem to be largely ignoring what is going on. Whether disappointed by previous digital adoption efforts or overwhelmed by current day-to-day issues, they approach AI as yet another digital upgrade to be factored into the growing technology backlog, and I’m left thinking “You just don’t get it, do you?”.

There's a moment of realization that comes when truly engaging with today’s AI—a moment when you understand that you're interacting with something fundamentally new. As Ethan Mollick states in his book "Co-intelligence: Living and Working with AI", the tell-tale sign that you have come to terms with AI is when you’ve had at least three sleepless nights.

As Mollick describes it, these aren't ordinary sleepless nights. They're the kind that come when you realize the world has shifted beneath your feet, when you find yourself at 3 AM asking an AI tool to perform tasks you previously thought impossible, only to watch it succeed. They're the nights when questions about the future of work, education, and perhaps even intelligence itself keep your mind racing until dawn.

What makes today's AI revolution different from previous technological shifts is both its speed and its nature. While past General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) like steam power or the internet took decades to reach widespread adoption, generative AI reached 100 million users faster than any product in history. The technology isn't just advancing quickly—it's already transforming how we work, learn, and create.

Unlike technologies that augment our physical capabilities or automated repetitive tasks, AI functions as what Mollick calls a "co-intelligence". It doesn't just enhance our strength or speed; it amplifies our thinking, creativity, and problem-solving abilities. Early studies suggest AI can improve productivity across diverse roles by 20-80%, far outpacing the productivity gains achieved by steam power during the Industrial Revolution.

For digital leaders, understanding this shift and its implications isn't optional. We've created something that already passes our hardest exams, from the bar exam to neurosurgery qualifications. It passes both the Turing Test and the Lovelace Test with ease. And remarkably, even those who built these systems don't fully understand why they can do all these things.

The impacts are already visible. Students leverage AI to explain complex concepts rather than attending classes. Entrepreneurs prototype products in half the usual time. Professionals across industries find themselves rethinking fundamental aspects of their work—from how they generate ideas to how they execute projects.

But for Mollick and others, this is just the beginning. AI isn't merely changing how we work; it's transforming education, entertainment, social interaction, and perhaps even our sense of self. Universities grapple with the future of writing assignments. Entertainment grows increasingly personalized. Social networks and news agencies face new challenges in detecting AI-generated misinformation.

As decision makers navigating this new landscape, we face profound questions: How do we harness this co-intelligence to enhance human potential rather than replace it? How do we prepare our organizations and workforce for collaboration with these powerful systems? And how do we ensure this technology develops in alignment with human values and needs?

No one—not even the experts building these systems—can fully answer these questions. But as Mollick suggests, the time for digital leaders to engage with these questions isn't someday in the distant future. It's now. If you’ve not yet experienced it, then your three sleepless nights await—and what you learn during them may determine whether your organization thrives or struggles in the age of co-intelligence.

How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of AI

Mollick's sleepless nights echo my own journey with AI, which I described in the book I published last year, "Surviving and Thriving in the Age of AI". That book represented my personal attempt to navigate the whirlwind of disruption AI has unleashed across industries, organizations, and careers. After 25 years in digital technology development and technology-driven transformation, I thought I had seen it all—yet AI proved to be something quite different.

My experiences with digital technology development and delivery have taught me that technology adoption follows predictable patterns: initial resistance, gradual acceptance, and eventual integration. But, as we’ve seen, AI has compressed this timeline dramatically. Organizations that once had years to adapt now have months. Sometimes only weeks. Roles that seemed immune to automation are being reimagined overnight. The rules of digital transformation I thought were very well defined have been rewritten.

What makes this transition particularly challenging is that AI isn't really about automating tasks; it's augmenting human cognition itself. Throughout my career, I've guided organizations through digital transformations where the technology's role was clear—it handled the routine tasks so humans could focus on the creative aspects.

For many, AI starts in a similar place. Soon, however, AI blurs these boundaries, performing tasks we once considered uniquely human: writing, designing, planning, even decision-making. I’ve reached a point in my work where I don’t quite understand what is meant by “creativity” in a digital age. As I work with multiple AI tools in an iterative flow, the journey I take is so dynamic that I no longer can keep track of where ideas start, how they morph as they evolve, and why they end up in their final state. I have the feeling that much (most?) of what we see today as “creative” activities and outputs have been formed in this way.

This disruption provides an unprecedented opportunity. In my book, I highlighted how forward-thinking individuals and organizations are finding their footing in this new landscape. The most successful aren't those simply implementing AI tools—they're the ones fundamentally rethinking work processes, organizational structures, and value creation models — really exploiting this new co-intelligence described by Mollick.

The question is no longer whether AI will transform your industry (it will), but rather how quickly you can evolve your thinking from seeing AI as just another technology tool to recognizing it as a collaborative intelligence that enhances human capabilities. My journey through the AI landscape has convinced me that this shift in perspective—from viewing AI as something we use to something we work with—is the single most important factor in determining who thrives and who merely survives.

Three Lessons from My AI Journey

On the path to this way of thinking with AI, I have found that several critical aspects of my approach to AI have shifted. Through my exploration of AI's transformative impact, I believe that three essential lessons guide digital leaders to face up to working with AI.

1. Augmentation trumps automation. The greatest value of AI isn't in replacing human work but in elevating it. Organizations fixated on cost-cutting through automation miss the more profound opportunity: using AI to enhance human creativity, decision-making, and problem-solving. The most successful implementations I've witnessed pair human contextual understanding and ethical judgment with AI's computational power and pattern recognition. This partnership produces outcomes neither could achieve alone.

2. Digital literacy is now AI literacy. Just as digital literacy became essential for professionals across all industries, AI literacy is now non-negotiable for leaders. This doesn't mean everyone needs to become a prompt engineer or understand the mechanics of transformer models. Rather, it means developing an intuitive understanding of AI capabilities and limitations, recognizing where it can add value, and knowing how to effectively collaborate with these systems. The leaders who invest in their AI literacy today will have a decisive advantage tomorrow.

3. Values become more important, not less. As AI handles more complex tasks, the distinctly human elements of work—empathy, ethical judgment, purpose, creativity—become more valuable, not less. The organizations that thrive will be those that intentionally infuse their AI implementations with their core values. Technology without clear ethical guidelines risks amplifying biases, eroding trust, and creating unintended consequences. In an AI-powered world, articulating and operationalizing your values isn't just good ethics—it's good business.

These lessons have shaped my approach to AI adoption and transformation. They remind us that even as technology advances at breathtaking speed, the fundamental questions for working with AI remain human ones: What risks must be addressed? How do we create value? How do we build and maintain trust? How do we ensure technology serves our deepest values rather than undermining them?

These are the critical questions occupying my waking hours. And with the constant advances in AI, I’m sure I will have many more sleepless nights to come!