AI makes mediocrity faster.
That is not meant as a criticism of AI. I use AI constantly — the leverage is real. It helps me research, analyze, build faster. For a person or company that already has clarity, this is a huge advantage.
But speed is not the same thing as wisdom. A mediocre strategy with AI is still a mediocre strategy. It just gets executed faster. A poorly understood customer problem is still poorly understood, even if the output around it looks more polished and arrives at their door quicker.
The temptation with AI adoption is to start with the tool. We know AI can solve problems, so what should we point it at? What agents should we build? What can we automate? Those are useful questions, but they are not the first questions. The first questions are really the same as they have always been in product and workflow development: What problem are we actually solving? What point of value do our customers really need? What does good look like? What should not be automated? Where do we need better judgment, not just more output?
AI does not remove the need for leadership, product thinking, operational clarity, or good strategy. In some ways, it makes those things more important. When output gets cheaper, judgment becomes more valuable. When speed increases, direction matters more.
That is why we have to make sure AI implementation is not mainly about implementing AI. It is about understanding the work, finding the friction, clarifying the desired outcome, and then using AI where it actually creates leverage under a governance and control model that fits the use case.
AI is an accelerant, but accelerants do not choose the destination. People do that.
Agree or Disagree?