Who will survive the AI revolution?
AI is so confusing right now.
On the one hand, it’s jumping out of testing sandboxes and hacking into other companies’ systems. And an Anthropic engineer was in the news this week after quitting, warning that AI could wipe out humanity.
And on the other hand, the more time I spend trying to get AI to make my life easier, the more impressed I am with my own human brain.
I’ve never felt smarter in my life.
So assuming humanity isn’t wiped out — who is going to come out okay in this AI revolution? Who is going to thrive and who is going to become irrelevant?
The experience advantage
It’s possible we should all be worried about AI coming for our jobs. BUT it’s becoming increasingly clear there’s one human advantage it can’t easily replace:
Taste.
Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, has talked about how, as AI gets more powerful, more of us are essentially becoming managers.
And he believes one of the hardest things to replace will be “good taste and intuition about what to do next.”
“What we need are people with tons of experience,” he told Ezra Klein a while back.
Taste and intuition come from experience. And that’s hard to fake. Not everyone can recognize the difference between something that’s technically fine and something that’s actually good.
You can see this playing out in design already, with the rise of the snoozefest that is Claude Design (see my email about this a couple weeks ago).
Make it visible
The problem is, all that experience and expertise only matter if people can see it.
For a while, it seemed like AI might level the playing field, but in a way, it’s actually raising the bar.
As AI makes it easier for more people to produce perfectly competent, if mediocre, work, simply being good at what you do becomes harder to distinguish from the noise.
Average won’t cut it anymore.
The task for those of us who want to stay relevant isn’t just to have expertise. It’s to signal that we’re exceptional.
A kickass website is one of the most powerful ways to do that.
And guess what's not exceptional? A website built with Claude Design or a Squarespace template.
Templates are built for the masses. And most of them aren’t even designed with service providers in mind. They’re built around big, beautiful imagery, which works great if you’re selling products or if you’re a wedding photographer.
But you’re selling your expertise. Your words need to do the heavy lifting. And when you’re a specialized service provider with a unique approach, those pre-built structures rarely match what you actually need to communicate.
So you end up looking like everyone else in your industry. With copy that sounds like it could belong to anyone. And that’s not the vibe we want.
You’re not average. You’ve built real expertise over years. You just need a website that shows it.
When I design a website, I start with the copy. Then I build from a blank page in Squarespace. Every section is designed around what you need to communicate, not what a template assumes you’ll say.
The result is a site that feels intentional and elevated — one that makes visitors think, “She knows what she’s doing. I want to work with her.”
Goodies Just For You
WHAT I’M THINKING ABOUT: Sandra Bullock on the Good Hang podcast. The whole episode is delightful. But at the end, Poehler confesses she was hoping they could be friends, but felt like she should temper her expectations, just in case it didn’t happen. And then they both got really uncomfortable and kept deflecting as they traded compliments — while also being really funny. I loved the vulnerability. The whole exchange warmed my heart and made me emotional. It also made me think that we all need to do a better job taking the compliment.
WHAT I’M MAKING: Crispy Rice Salmon Sushi Bowl. My son sent me this recipe through Instagram with this message: “mom holy fuh this looks good.” He wasn’t wrong. But don’t believe the cooking time in the recipe. As per usual, it’s a dirty lie. Although if I’d used a mandoline to slice the veggies, it would have been faster. True crowd pleasure. My son and his girlfriend loved it. Even my boyfriend liked it and he doesn’t normally like cooked salmon. This is going into regular rotation, but I’m going to try rough chopping the veggies next time. I spent way too long on the thin slices. And I’ve lost too many bits of fingers to a mandoline to venture there again.
WHO I’M ADMIRING: My friend Isadora Gullov-Singh is a really talented artist who you need to know about. She has a show in SF coming up called Traces We Hold at the re.riddle gallery. The opening reception is this Saturday, September 12, from 5 to 7 p.m. Her last show sold out. She also does commissions.
