AI Widens the Path [Raw Session]

00:00 — Thinking About AI Differently

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds.

I’ve been thinking about AI a little bit differently lately.

I’m always thinking about it. Obviously I use it all the time, but I’m thinking about it differently. Not completely different. I still think a lot of the same concerns that we have are real.

Jobs are going to change. We’re going to lose jobs. Some work is just going to completely disappear in my mind.

I still think companies are going to use AI to do more with fewer people. Inevitable, in my mind. I do think new jobs will appear that we have no idea about yet, but that takes time. I don’t think there’s any honest way around any of this. AI is going to disrupt the workforce in general.

But I also think there’s another side to this that I haven’t really given enough attention to in my mind.

AI widens the path.

The career path. Not in a cheesy way. Not in an “everyone is going to get rich and build a company overnight” kind of way. I don’t believe that at all.

But I do think AI changes what one person can attempt.

It changes how far someone can get before they need a full team. It changes what kind of skills become valuable and important. It changes who gets to participate in work that used to be locked behind credentials, departments, budgets, years of waiting on permission and building experience.

That part feels positive to me.

It’s still complicated. It’s messy, and it’s full of all kinds of risk.

But it’s positive, because for a long time if you wanted to build something you had to stay in your own lane.

You were a developer, designer, marketer, entrepreneur, support person, accountant, lawyer, founder in general. And yes, people crossed over from time to time, but for most people their career path narrowed pretty quickly.

Your career path might have got longer, but it didn’t get wider. You learned a skill, you got paid for that skill, and you kept doing that same skill. If your idea required five other skills, then you either needed money, a team, connections, or a whole lot of extra time.

AI does not remove all of that, but it does widen the path to allow one person to take bigger strides and wider steps.

02:52 — AI Is Not Only a Replacement Story

Most of the AI conversation still seems to be around replacement.

Developers, designers, writers, customer support, accountants, paralegals. And the honest answer probably is yes. In some ways it will replace some tasks, most tasks, or parts of tasks. It will reduce the number of people needed for certain kinds of work.

Some jobs may become a lot smaller. Some roles may disappear completely. There may be fewer people in each position. There may be more skilled people, or more manager-type roles. It’s going to change the whole landscape, I believe.

And especially when you put AI together with physical AI, that changes a whole other dynamic of robotics, automation, sensors, and machines that can actually interact with the physical world. That disrupts a ton of things.

I don’t think we should pretend that it isn’t going to happen, but replacement is only one side of the story.

The other side is expansion.

And it’s very exciting to me because AI also lets people do things they could not do before.

It lets a developer explore design. It lets a designer explore development.

It lets founders explore legal, accounting, content, support, research, marketing, flows, everything. You can build out your full product spec, your pitch deck, and get legal drafted up. Everything’s done. You put a couple of prompts together and set up the proper agents.

That does not make you an expert in any of those areas. You still need eyeballs to oversee it and make sure it’s done correctly. That’s an important distinction. But it gets you enough to start.

Starting is where a lot of ideas used to die, and they still die there.

Not because people were lazy. Sometimes.

Not because they didn’t care. They probably care, but they didn’t have enough passion to follow through.

But because the path was too narrow. That’s the real reason, I think.

They had the idea but not the team. They had the product instinct but not the technical ability or skills. They had the design sense but not the back-end knowledge to build it out. They had the business idea but not the money to hire people and build the team around it.

So the thing never moved.

AI changes that quite a bit. It doesn’t guarantee success. It just gives more people a way in and gives more of an opportunity to be successful.

05:36 — The Career Path Gets Wider

I think this matters for careers, too.

I think it matters for careers in a big way because for a long time career growth was often about being very specialized.

You pick a thing. You become good at that thing. You become very good at that thing. Then you try to move inside of that thing higher up and become more specialized. The more specialized you are, the better your pay got, and the more you’re the expert.

I don’t think that goes away.

But AI is probably going to shift what companies value when they hire. Instead of only hiring someone who can do that one narrow task, companies may start looking for people who understand that domain, that task, and that work skill, but at the same time know how to use AI to their advantage.

They can use AI to stretch across not just that task, but all the other tasks involved with doing the business or the development or whatever it is.

And that’s a different kind of person.

That’s not someone who knows nothing and just types prompts. That’s not what I mean at all.

I mean someone who has real knowledge in an area that a company needs. But that person can use AI to multiply that knowledge across adjacent areas.

Are you a UX designer who understands product flows, friction, user behavior, and visuals?

You may now be able to move much deeper into the development process. You may not be able to produce a full-stack app. You can’t replace a full-stack developer, obviously, but now you can get a real MVP moving out the door.

You can get it in people’s hands. You can work through screens, interactions, front-end code, and test flows. With testing and UI and AI, you can find where the experience breaks and build out something that people can actually use.

You can get a prototype out pretty quickly, and that’s a big shift. Before, the designer may have needed a developer just to see if the idea was even possible to build. Then you needed a marketer to get it out in front of people.

Now they can build something from the idea all the way to where testers can touch it. Then they can bring it to a pitch deck, possibly try to get investment, build a team around it, get actual traction behind it, and get real feedback.

That feels like a healthier path in some ways.

Instead of needing the full team before you even know if the idea is workable and if it matters, you can test more ideas early.

You can get the first versions out faster.

You can learn before spending as much money.

That’s a big difference.

And you can make smaller bets.

That matters too, because now you’re not wasting your cycles. You can have multiple fires burning at the same time and see which one catches.

And then you can build a team.

09:00 — This Applies Beyond Developers and Designers

I don’t think this only applies to developers and designers.

I see the same thing with small law firms.

A lot of people get into law and they really want to take on the large companies to help the smaller people. They want to do those class action suits.

But that’s the kind of thing that takes a lot of time and effort. It takes a lot of research, and usually they can only take on one at a time if it doesn’t take up their full workload.

AI doesn’t replace the lawyer and the judgment behind it, but it helps a small firm take on those heavy, long, task-driven lawsuits. Now they can take on more of them because AI helps with the research, summaries, document intake, witness statements, and analyzing everything.

All of the lawyer stuff that has to happen, a lot of that can be done quickly through AI and then brought to the front for review. They can take on more cases and try to help more people.

Same thing with accountants. An accountant can suddenly do their intake, processing, and formulas. They may be able to take on more clients and bring it down to a point where, in the end, they just review before filing to make sure everything is done right.

That allows them to take on more people and possibly hire more people.

Same with lawyers.

Maybe it feels like a single person can do more, but then it allows them to bring in more people so they can help more people.

So a small firm that uses AI can suddenly start growing with AI.

That’s a different shift to think about.

10:56 — Developers, Designers, and the Advantage of Knowing the Work

I think, like I said, maybe I put this one in twice.

Designers have the biggest advantage. I said that because designers understand everything about that.

But then it comes down to the designers at the end needing to build a team. They can get the prototype out there.

But I believe developers might have the biggest advantage. Maybe it’s just me. I’m biased because I am a developer.

But developers know where all the bodies are buried here.

AI is built by developers, technically. We know what a working demo is. Taking an idea to MVP, we know what a demo really is. We know what lipstick on pigs are. We know an app can look amazing but it’s all just popsicle sticks.

That’s where it hits for me, because I can tell AI to build something and it can look great. Now I can use AI as my designer. I can use it as my marketer. I may not understand that database, or I may not know how to do an iOS or Android app currently, but I can have this do it for me. I can click the buttons.

But I do know that I can’t really put it out there for the masses because I can’t trust the authentication. I can’t trust personal data not being leaked. There are going to be edge cases that I don’t know about.

So it can help me move fast. It can generate the code, write the tests, and do all that stuff.

But I still have to judge it.

That’s what matters.

That’s one of the reasons I don’t think AI completely replaces developers, designers, and people for all the work. Not in the way people are talking about.

AI can throw that product out there, but it doesn’t know every edge case and what humans are going to do to it.

I don’t even know what all my users are going to do. But if something happens, I can try to anticipate what those oddities are.

AI can try to predict things, but we really have to have a team around it.

So once the product is out there and we have that alpha, this is where it becomes: now we need real people.

13:58 — From Idea to Alpha Is Different Than Alpha to Product

This is the part I keep running into personally, because AI makes it much easier to get from idea to alpha, or even beta in some cases.

And that is real.

I can have an idea and get something visible pretty quickly now.

A product can go from sitting in my head to running on a server. That still feels strange.

Honestly, it’s one of the most positive parts of AI to me.

Because I’ve had ideas sitting around for years. Most developers probably have. Little tools, apps, business ideas, experiments. AI lowers the cost for me to get those out there.

But there’s a big difference between an alpha and a finished product.

That’s what I’m trying to get at here.

An alpha is something people can try. They can play with it. I can get feedback. I can let people click it.

But taking real money from different people, holding real information in there, and having users depend on the thing is totally different to me.

That’s the threshold I struggle with.

Not the starting. The finishing, the hardening, and the trusting.

I think a lot of AI-built products are going to hit that wall. They all look good. Demos are good. Landing pages are great. They take your money. They have quick little dashboards. But they don’t have all those nuances that true products have. Those gotchas and weird things you have to have, but no one ever talks about.

That’s where the path gets wider.

And that’s where the work still lives.

AI widens the path, but it does not remove that last mile.

So even as a developer, if I go through that process, I am going to have to get a team.

I am going to have to get someone who understands social media and marketing better than I do to make sure it’s pushed out right.

I’m going to have to bring in security people to help me make sure I’ve got all my holes tightened. A support team to help manage chatbots or whatever we decide to do.

Because I think a lot of small apps and small businesses are going to be created where more jobs may get created. It’s just going to take a little time, I think.

16:18 — The New Hiring Question

I think this also changes how we look at how we hire.

In the past, I’ve always hired someone who’s very good at a specific thing. A marketer, a designer, security, a lawyer, an accountant. And it still makes perfect sense to me.

But now what’s more valuable, in my mind, is someone who has a strong base and a strong knowledge of those things, but they know how to use AI on top of that.

You may not be an actual certified accountant. You may not be a 20-year senior developer. You may be more of a junior developer, but you grasp and understand development.

I’d almost rather hire a designer who has a small background in development, so they get it.

But then you also need to have your database person who understands security and models and code.

You mix all that together. You’ve got a hodgepodge team of misfits, basically, but by using AI they become super-powered.

But it’s not someone who just says they use AI.

That won’t be enough.

Everyone is going to say that, and they already are.

The difference will be whether they can show how AI makes their actual work better.

Can a designer use AI to move an idea closer to MVP?

Can a developer use AI to ship faster?

Can a marketer use AI to test more angles without turning everything into generic AI slop?

Can an operations person use AI to automate boring workflows without breaking the business?

Can a support person use AI to find patterns in customer issues and feed that back into product?

Can it all trickle back in properly?

That’s the career opportunity I think AI is going to help create.

Not AI expert as a vague label, but a person who has domain judgment and knows how to extend that judgment with AI.

That may become one of the most valuable combinations.

Skill plus AI. Taste plus AI. Experience plus AI. Context plus AI.

Because AI by itself is still missing something.

It needs direction. It needs correction and judgment. It needs someone who knows when the answer is technically correct but pretty much wrong.

It puts you on the right path to the answer.

And that’s where people still matter.

19:15 — The Path Gets Wider, But Not Easier

I don’t want to make this sound easier than it is, because widening the path does not mean the path becomes easy.

It may actually become more confusing.

Before, your lane was narrower. You knew what you were supposed to do.

You were a developer, you developed. Designers designed. Marketers marketed.

Now the edges are blurred.

A designer can build. A developer can design. A founder can write code. A solo person can launch a product. A small team can do what used to require a much larger team.

And that is extremely exciting to me.

This video was made to bring a positive outlook. Not job replacement as the whole thing, but new career paths and new opportunities that are existing.

I don’t believe we’re going to have to go out and get a full university degree and become certified in everything.

I have a Java certification from many years ago. What does that mean now? Nothing.

I can get AI to write Java.

As long as I have a basic understanding of coding and how coding languages work, I can use AI to help build any language. It makes no difference.

But I still need to have the understanding of how it works. So when something goes wrong, or I want to review it to make sure it’s built properly, that’s important.

It also means people have to think more clearly, because when you can do more, you also have to decide more.

You have to decide what is worth building.

Is it good enough for alphas?

Is it safe for real users?

You have to decide when to bring in those experts.

You have to decide when AI is helping and when it’s just producing more stuff.

I hate that part.

And that’s a real problem.

AI can create momentum, but it can also create noise.

It can make you feel productive when you avoid the hard questions.

Does this thing actually matter?

Does anyone want it?

Can they trust it?

Can they support it?

Should it even exist?

Those questions don’t go away.

If anything, they become more important because now building is easier.

So judgment becomes more valuable.

21:38 — Why This Still Feels Positive

The positive part to me is not that AI makes everyone successful at once.

Most products are still going to fail. They won’t work. They’ll get no traction. Distribution is hard.

But more people get to try. They get to put those ideas out there to see what sticks, and that matters.

More people can build first versions.

People can learn how to make things and build things now.

More people can cross over into areas they were curious about and add that to their repertoire, their toolkit.

More people can test ideas without waiting years.

More people can become useful in ways their job titles never allowed.

And that feels like a widening of opportunity.

Not equal opportunity. Not perfect. But wider than before.

I think that’s worth paying attention to because if we only talk about AI’s replacement, we miss the people who will use it to become more capable.

The designer who’s more technical.

The developer who’s more product-minded.

The small business who can finally automate admin work and focus on the business and the customer.

The person with no team who can finally test his ideas out.

The employee who can move beyond their job description because they know how to use AI well within their job.

That’s real.

And it might be one of the better parts of the whole shift that we’re seeing happening right now.

23:12 — Closing Reflection

So I think that’s where I’m landing.

AI is going to replace work. No getting around it. I don’t think we should ever pretend otherwise.

But it also widens that career path.

It changes what one person can attempt. It changes what small teams can build. It changes how careers may grow in the future. It changes who gets to move closer to the work they actually care about.

And that’s a big one, because if you love what you do, it’s not work.

A UX designer may not become a full-stack engineer overnight, but they can build an MVP and get a product out the door pretty quick for testing. They can get it in the hands of the developer and give them a better idea of what to build and a framework to start from.

Then the developer can use AI to help build it out quicker by doing the tests, documentation, modeling, database, and all that. You’ve got a small team building great products at that point.

A developer may not become a lawyer or an accountant, but they may be able to get far enough. They’ll have the small pieces to add in there to do the proper conversions of what legalese needs to be here, what boundaries am I crossing, is this product legal in certain states or countries, what conversion of money and taxes across all the places. A lot of accounting things and tracking can get the basics done.

But you need the real specific people to help you.

So once you get to that level and your idea gets traction, then you need to build a team.

I think jobs will come around. It might turn into a gig-chores type marketplace where you don’t have a normal career anymore, but your skills are needed across multiple apps and multiple businesses.

That’s a great way to think about it, I think.

And that’s the part I find encouraging.

Not that AI removes the need for people, but it may let people step into work they were previously blocked from.

The path is wider now.

The hard parts are still there. Trust is still hard. Security is still hard. Marketing is very hard. Marketing is the key, because I talked about attention and getting that attention. Once you have it, keep it. Once you’ve got it and you can hold it, that’s when the money comes.

Getting people to care is still hard. Finishing is still hard.

But starting is different.

And for a lot of people, that may be enough just to change the direction of your life.

Not all at once and not overnight, but slowly. One idea, one test, one small build at a time.

I did this one quick because with everything going on, I want to have more positive videos about this. I’m trying to take a step back to see what’s really happening.

AI is really going to help us, I think, have different career paths and a lot of new ideas.

I’m very excited for this.

Thanks for watching.