AI Is Here to Stay and Waiting Is No Longer an Option

We’re now roughly twenty-seven months past the public launch of ChatGPT, and the world is forever changed.

If you’ve been waiting for the hype to die down or for the pace of innovation to slow, now is the time to come to terms with the fact that it’s not going to happen.

However, for the sake of argument, I’ll say that even if it did—even if AI progress stopped today and what we have now is the best version of AI we’d ever get—we’d still make years of strategic gains before reaching a point of equilibrium again.

Most businesses have barely scratched the surface of what ChatGPT’s 4o model series can do, let alone understanding the immense capability of reasoning models like the o1 or o3 series, which excel at complex decision-making and problem-solving, or Deepseek’s headline-making r1 model, which is designed to push the boundaries of AI comprehension, enabling deeper contextual understanding and more sophisticated problem-solving.

Yet, many business leaders still remain unsure about what AI truly means for their organizations.

The AI Definition Problem

When I look out over the landscape at companies yet to adopt AI, it occurs to me that part of the problem is definitional. AI is a broad, non-specific term that means many different things to many different people.

The letters AI, and the two words they abbreviate, have been co-opted by nearly every product you use—from marketing automation tools that do little more than schedule social media posts to so-called AI-powered toothbrushes that merely track brushing habits.

The result of this “jargon-creep” (I made that term up) is that referring to AI could mean generating copy for a social media post or predicting protein structures to accelerate drug discovery.

For many businesses, confusion and amorphous information abound, making it easier to retreat into the safe, familiar ways of doing things while telling themselves they’ll change when they have to.

A New Era of Work

But hear me when I say this: It’s a mistake to turn away from what’s happening.

Regardless of how you feel about the direction we’re traveling as a capitalist society, we are moving toward a complete reimagining of how work gets done.

We don’t want to talk about the automation of a large portion of knowledge work and the labor disruption that is sure to come with it (and has already begun), but we must.

“The history of major economic and technological shifts shows that such moments can define the rise and fall of companies,” write the authors of McKinsey’s recent report, Superagency in the Workplace: Empowering People to Unlock AI’s Full Potential.

“Over 40 years ago, the internet was born. Since then, companies including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft have attained trillion-dollar market capitalizations. Even more profoundly, the internet changed the anatomy of work and access to information. AI now is like the internet many years ago: The risk for business leaders is not thinking too big, but rather too small.”

Thinking Too Small

What’s too small?

If you’re asking how AI can write your emails or automate your social media posts, you’re thinking too small. If you’re wondering how AI can summarize your Zoom calls, you’re thinking too small. If you’re asking how you can make your B players A players and your A players superstars—well, now you’re asking the right questions.

Now you’re starting to think big enough.

The question for business leaders isn’t, “What can AI do for my company?” Rather, it’s, “What can AI help me and my employees become?”

Consider a company like Moderna, which gave all of its employees access to ChatGPT and saw an immediate transformation in productivity and innovation.

Employees across departments—from R&D to marketing—used AI to streamline workflows, generate insights, and enhance decision-making.

By embracing AI at every level, Moderna created a culture where experimentation and efficiency flourished, setting a new standard for enterprise-wide AI adoption.

This is the kind of thinking that AI enables, and the kind of transformation business leaders should be aiming for.

But what really gets me excited is that with zero technical ability and no understanding of code, you can—right now, today, for twenty dollars a month—create custom GPTs that act as co-CEOs, co-strategists, and co-CMOs.

You can create AI audiences and test campaigns against them, refine your negotiation strategies in real time, role-play sales scenarios, get feedback on your public speaking skills, and run dilution calculations in seconds before raising your next round.

You can even have an autonomous AI agent perform deep research on geographic market expansion while you chat with a coworker and drink your morning cup of coffee.

The Risk of Falling Behind

If you’re not thinking about this every day and discussing it regularly within your organization, you’re falling behind. If you haven’t set up an AI council or appointed an AI champion within your company, you’re falling behind.

This is the hard truth that no one wants to hear.

The gap between you and your competitors is closing quickly, and the faster you realize this, the better. You must think big. You must take risks. You must do the hard work of transformation.

Because that’s what this moment requires.

“To truly harness the potential of AI,” McKinsey writes later in the same piece, “companies must challenge themselves to envision and implement more breakthrough initiatives. Success in the era of AI hinges not just on technology deployment or employee willingness but also on visionary leadership. The ingredients are here. The technology is already highly capable and rapidly advancing, and employees are more ready than leaders think.”

The Only Path Forward

If you only take away one thing from this piece, make it this: Stop waiting and start doing. Identify one area in your business where AI can create immediate impact, whether it’s reimagining entire business models, redefining industry standards, or pioneering entirely new ways of operating.

Take the first step today—because in this new era, hesitation is the greatest risk.

AI is here to stay.

Get moving.