August 2026
Roger Hurni was explaining why he doesn't think AI levels the playing field between employees. He argues that whoever pushes back on the AI's output, rather than accepting a confident-sounding answer at face value, is the one worth investing in.
Transcript
You know, it's evergreen because it has to do with human thinking. And so I'm not worried about it being like, oh my God, I get this out because it's about AI. It's about our evolution with it. And it's a futurist point of view. So I'm not like under some sort of pressure deadline. I would like to see the book done. And here's the thing: compared to my last book, which I wrote literally every word by myself, like without help, I am actually going to use AI to prove the point that you can work with AI in a really impactful way. So I do expect it to be written faster because of that. And I'm starting to see the advantages of that just because of the way I've trained. The agent, the way I'm writing, it's still my stories, my ideas, speaking into a computer and having it help me organize. So I would love to have it finished by the end of this year. And then if it comes out by the end of next year, it's probably just the publishing world just takes a long time to get through all that stuff. So I would definitely like it to come out next year sometime.
So expensive sameness reference that you've used, I think Will talked about earlier. Expensive sameness. Are you talking about the fact that everybody will be producing stuff using the same tools? So everything will be vanilla. So all the same, but you've paid a lot of money to do it. Is that the point you're making with that?
No, what I'm saying is that if AI is an equalizer for people who are smart and for people who are stupid, then you need to have some other element that makes someone better than the other person. You guys have employees, right? Someone comes into your organization or you've got two employees, both with the same number of years' experience, basically the same background, and they have the same access to AI tools, who's the better person? It's going to be the one who asks the better questions. Because the person who just throws everything into ChatGTP and then puts out this very confident, polished report, even if it's wrong, is not the valuable person. It's the person who comes back with that messier document, the handwritten notes in the margins. The person who's like, hey, I didn't like these couple of answers, so I dug deeper. And I went back to the research and I found this that it didn't flag. And that's the person who's going to be the critical thinker. And that's the person you want to invest in. And in a few years, those two groups of people, they're not going to be the same place in any organization. One's just getting answers. But the other one, again, is expanding the thinking, expanding the options and applying judgment.
And I suppose those people would always, those curious people that ask the right questions that are driven, irrespective of when they practiced in their profession, pre-AI, post-AI, they're always going to rise to the top, aren't they? You know, whatever technology they've got at their means, you know, that's going to get them far, isn't it? That has to.
Yeah. But I mean, you don't want someone who just mindlessly pumps out a press before AI. You wouldn't want someone who mindlessly pumps out a press release, crosses the T's dot line, hands it in without critical thinking behind it. It's just AI has just removed those social barriers, that social friction, and the ethics, quite frankly, to accelerate bad behavior.
It's a tricky, I mean, back to this transitionary period we're in. It's tricky, isn't it? Because at the moment, there is a clear advantage of people that use AI, irrespective of how critical they're thinking. So it gives them an immediate kind of leg up, doesn't it? Just by virtue of using it. But obviously, that, you know, sooner or later, it's going to be a level playing field again.
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