I have been reading a lot of excited opinions about how people are using Artificial Intelligence tools to reduce the time they usually spend doing repetitive tasks.

From writing email templates, to crafting presentations or summarizing documents, AI seems to be everywhere now.

And as long as we understand that this “Artificial Intelligence” isn’t really “intelligent” in the general sense, and we need to double check that it didn’t hallucinate something barbaric into that important brief we are about to deliver to the court, everything will be ok.

Because the nature of what we call today “Artificial Intelligence” is still far from being the trustworthy advisor, with bulletproof precision, that we have been promised by Science Fiction.

That’s the reason why Generative AI is still under the scientific classification of “Narrow AI” or “Weak AI”, and the search for the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) continues.

But there is an even greater risk for us, as Humanity, that comes from the irresponsible use of Artificial Intelligence.

Nir Diamant explains in his excellent article the transition from Search Engines into AI Agents doing the searches and summarizations for us.

Before Google… before the Internet and its Search Engines (because Google wasn’t the first), when we needed information, we went to the library.

We first looked into general stuff, trying to find the right topic… to ask the right question.

Then, after stumbling with a few books or encyclopedias that weren’t what we were looking for, we found our first book, publication or paper really relevant for our research.

As we read, and jumped from author to author, we acquired the knowledge that gave us critical understanding about the subject, and the ability to know what else to look for.

In the end, we had built for ourselves a theoretical framework that now made us a lot more knowledgeable in the subject, and capable of discussing it, or even adding to it.

Now jump into the late 1990’s.

Internet brought entire libraries online, with the capability of searching text directly into them.

Then content was created on Internet and for Internet, and the amount of possible sources exploded.

But if you think about it, the knowledge acquisition didn’t change on its core, it just became more efficient.

Today, when you know nothing about a topic, and are not even capable of articulating the right question, you can start on Google or Wikipedia.

Google will give you a few hundred results that will look useful, and you’ll stumble with a few dozen of them, finally becoming literate enough to find your first authoritative source.

Then, after some reading and bouncing between useful and not useful material, you’ll be able to create your own theoretical framework.

Just what you did in the library, but faster.

Enter the Artificial Intelligence into the scene.

Now people no longer tries to understand enough to ask the proper questions, then find potential sources and use their own critical thinking to decide which ones to use and which ones to leave out.

They just ask the AI tools to summarize a topic, providing references to the sources, and most of the time they just stop there.

People are taking whatever the AI produced as final, many times not even reviewing it for correctness or even if it makes sense (remember our disgraced lawyer from Colorado).

When we research a topic, every source we find and partially read that doesn’t lead directly to our final result, becomes part of our “human neural network”.

The next time we need something, there is a chance we have stumbled with it before, and we at least know where to start looking.

That extended network of loosely related knowledge about a topic is what makes us experts on it.

If some AI spoon-feeds us summaries, it prevents us from building our own neural network, and using our critical thinking.

In short, the AI is doing the thinking, instead of us.

And this reminded me of a scene from the movie The Matrix, where Agent Smith (an Artificial Intelligence entity) opens up to Morpheus about The Matrix and how it came to be:

“Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization which is of course what this is all about. Evolution.”

— The Matrix (1999)

I dare you to perform a large mathematical operation in your head.

We lost that capability with the introduction of calculators in our Education systems

I dare you to remember 10 or 20 phone numbers from your family or friends (as everyone did in the 80’s).

Mobile phones with address books made us lose that capability too.

If we start delegating into AI our critical thinking, our own neural networks will become weakened.

And, paraphrasing Agent Smith, when will OUR civilization become THEIR civilization?

We might not even notice it.

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So, what I think we should be doing?

The current state of our Artificial Intelligence is a powerful tool, and shouldn't be ignored.

AI is here to stay, and will slowly evolve into something we will be able to depend on more and more, with confidence.

But while we reach that point, the approach of tools like Google’s NotebookLM can be the perfect way to get the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls.

It is possible to use NotebookLM as a repository of the information we have found, and we will be safe from AI Hallucinations, because the summaries will be constrained to the information we provided.

How do we find the information to feed into NotebookLM?

We can use the old method of Search Engines, or ask AI tools to fetch sources for us.

Read.

Review.

Then use our critical thinking to know what to include and what not.

But remember that when you ask an AI tool to fetch sources for you, it is deciding internally which ones and which ones not.

And this decision is guided by its programming, and the data from its training model.

And both can (and will) be biased.

So it is your responsibility as Human In The Loop (HITL) to make sure you are picking the right information, and learning without biases.

I strongly recommend reading the excellent article from Wyndo about how to learn complex topics by using NotebookLM.

I hope this (long) rant about the potential misuse of Artificial Intelligence and its impact in our society was interesting and useful to you.

Let me know what you think in the comments, and share this article with anyone you think should be aware of this topic.

Talk to you soon!

Alfredo.

When you are ready, here is how I can help you:

By subscribing to my publication and reading this article you have already taken the first steps into redesigning your business to succeed during the Age of AI, .

But if you want to go further, here are several options:

• If you want to start right away, you can join me in my 3-day Future-Proof Entrepreneur Challenge, where you will learn how to analyze your Profit Model (how your business makes money today), look around for the Exponential Technologies you will need to make it work in the Age of AI, and finally create a plan to make it happen.

• You can check my FREE guide “7 Profit Models to Succeed in the Age of AI”.

• And also my FREE guide “7 New Technologies that can wreck your Business like Netflix wrecked Blockbuster”.

The Entrepreneuring AI is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can let me know that my content is valuable by fueling my coffee addiction, so I can keep producing it for free 😸☕️

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It was the year 2019, and I was still at the Maastricht School of Management (The Netherlands) finishing my MBA program.

Our professor of Global Economics, a very reputable scholar, presented us with a preview of a paper he was writing about his research on the international market dynamics.

I still remember when he showed us the data, and said unceremoniously: “The world is following a process of Deglobalization…”.

Of course we thought he was crazy.

How could that be possible?

With Amazon thriving, Aliexpress quickly growing as a fierce competitor, European fast fashion fueled by Chinese factories, etc.

Blockchain logistics seemed to be the next big thing, while Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum soared in value and market cap.

Deglobalization… yeah right.

But fast forward to 2025, and I no longer think the good professor was wrong nor crazy.

What we are seeing right now: ferocious tariffs being wielded as weapons between former political and economical allies, factories and entire businesses being recalled home, etc. isn’t encouraging.

A quote commonly attributed to Frédéric Bastiat is:

“When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”

— Frédéric Bastiat

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And even if we are still far from a scenario where a generalized armed conflict could arise, the effects of such “deglobalization” phenomenon will be felt by every business.

What the current situation should teach us is that we really cannot predict in which direction the world, the markets, and society itself will move.

While everyone was worried about the potential effect of an extreme globalization, with global supply chains reducing costs, but also bringing overseas competitors to our local markets, now we must prepare for the opposite.

By now we can probably agree that “the only constant is change”.

And we, as business leaders and owners, must be prepared to take our organizations in whatever direction is needed to not only survive, but thrive.

The Trade War has just started, and we must deal with it.

Fast.

Mimicking Nature itself, only Adaptable Organizations can ensure their ability to survive, no matter what happens within the market.

Based on my experience, I’ve created the “Future-Proof Entrepreneur System™”, that makes sure your organization acquires the following six critical capabilities of any Adaptable Organization:

• Clear business vision, values and expected outcomes

• Fast objectives setting, adjustment and control

• Agile project management

• A Customer Experience Management culture that listens and quickly adapts

• A company-wide Change Management process

• Cost-efficient and frictionless technology adoption

Let’s review them one by one.

Clear business vision, values and expected outcomes

A business’ vision, values and expected outcomes, can act as guardrails when the policies are insufficient and people needs to make decisions.

Without them, it becomes almost impossible to keep everyone aligned in the same direction, especially during hard and uncertain times.

An organization in disarray during stressful times is as good as dead.

Fast objectives setting, adjustment and control

We no longer have the luxury of spending months of “strategic planning” for the next year.

5-year plans don’t last 1 year at the current pace of change.

We need to set yearly objectives, but manage them quarterly, and completely redefine them if needed.

In short, this is called the Objectives and Key Results methodology (OKR).

Agile project management

Projects no longer can take months or even years to provide tangible benefits.

The whole reason to be of a project can disappear or radically change in the middle of its execution.

Agile project management methodologies are indispensable to make sure we are still building something that makes business sense, and adapting the scope on the fly if needed.

A Customer Experience Management culture that listens and quickly adapts

In the Age of AI, automation and robots behind the counter and the workplace, the human touch will be a key (and expensive) differentiator.

An organization designed to listen to the Voice of the Customer, and to act accordingly in response, will win every time.

But this requires a purposeful end-to-end redesign, where everyone in the organization knows the part they must play in the great Customer Experience act.

A company-wide Change Management process

Adaptability means change.

And change is risky if it is not managed properly.

The only sure thing in the near future is that organizations will have to be in a state of constant change and adaptation.

So a properly implemented Change Management process, that covers the whole organization, will be key to success.

Cost-efficient and frictionless technology adoption

There are many ways to acquire new technology.

A big corporation can sign up a contract with a big AI provider, and pay enormous amounts of money for a service they hope will give them an edge over their competition.

A small business cannot afford to be so careless.

But with some expert guidance, they could implement Open Source technology that can provide them the same level of benefit, but at a smaller scale (for a smaller business) at a fraction of the cost.

This way, being small can be turned into an advantage, not only in the size of the solutions required, but the speed at which those can be adopted.

While your bigger competitors are entangled in red tape and budget approvals, you’ll be already reaping the benefits of new technology that gives you the upper hand.

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Turning your business into an Adaptable Business

You have already taken the first steps into redesigning your business to become Adaptable, and making sure it will thrive during the Age of AI, by subscribing to my publication and reading this article.

But if you want to go further, here are several options:

• If you want to start right away, you can join me in my 3-day Future-Proof Entrepreneur Challenge, where you will learn how to analyze your Profit Model (how your business makes money today), look around for the Exponential Technologies you will need to make it work in the Age of AI, and finally create a plan to make it happen.

• You can check my FREE guide “7 Profit Models to Succeed in the Age of AI”.

• And also my FREE guide “7 New Technologies that can wreck your Business like Netflix wrecked Blockbuster”.

We cannot predict what else will change in the near future.

But we can be sure this is just the beginning of it.

Time to get ready.

Talk to you soon,

Alfredo.

The Entrepreneuring AI is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can let me know that my content is valuable by fueling my coffee addiction, so I can keep producing it for free 😸☕️

Buy me a coffee

Every time I read about the new developments we see every day on Exponential Technologies (AI, Robotics, Cryptocurrencies, Quantum Technology, etc.) I cannot avoid thinking about those who just continue with their business as usual, as unsuspecting as the dinosaurs when the asteroid came.

In particular, business leaders and owners.

Big corporations usually have Chief Information Officers (CIO), Chief Technology Officers (CTO) and etc. who are paid the big bucks to be well informed and up to date.

With tons of emerging technologies making their appearance daily, they usually have big budgets (and big teams) to explore and learn which ones they need to adopt to ensure their business survival.

But Small and Medium Businesses don’t have that luxury.

Neither do some non-tech Entrepreneurs, who are 100% focused on achieving Product-Market Fit (PMF) in a market that is about to be hit by the proverbial asteroid.

That’s the reason why I started this publication a couple of years ago.

If I could reach at least a small number of those business leaders and entrepreneurs, and share with them proven strategies and enough applied technology knowledge, they would be able to steer their businesses safely into this new changing environment.

The core concept behind business survival is, unsurprisingly, very Darwinian.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives,

not the most intelligent that survives.

It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

— Charles Darwin

So, the most important capability a business must have to survive in a changing environment is Adaptability.

My personal experience has shown me that an Adaptable Organization needs to have at least the following six organizational capabilities:

• Clear business vision, values and expected outcomes

• Fast objectives setting, adjustment and control

• Agile project management

• A Customer Experience Management culture that listens and quickly adapts

• A company-wide Change Management process

• Cost-efficient and frictionless technology adoption

I’ve named this the “Future-Proof Entrepreneur System™”.

Let’s review its components one by one.

Subscribe now

Clear business vision, values and expected outcomes

A business’ vision, values and expected outcomes, can act as guardrails when the policies are insufficient and people needs to make decisions.

Without them, it becomes almost impossible to keep everyone aligned in the same direction, especially during hard and uncertain times.

An organization in disarray during stressful times is as good as dead.

Fast objectives setting, adjustment and control

We no longer have the luxury of spending months of “strategic planning” for the next year.

5-year plans don’t last 1 year at the current pace of change.

We need to set yearly objectives, but manage them quarterly, and completely redefine them if needed.

In short, this is called the Objectives and Key Results methodology (OKR).

Agile project management

Projects no longer can take months or even years to provide tangible benefits.

The whole reason to be of a project can disappear or radically change in the middle of its execution.

Agile project management methodologies are indispensable to make sure we are still building something that makes business sense, and adapting the scope on the fly if needed.

A Customer Experience Management culture that listens and quickly adapts

In the Age of AI, automation and robots behind the counter and the workplace, the human touch will be a key (and expensive) differentiator.

An organization designed to listen to the Voice of the Customer, and to act accordingly in response, will win every time.

But this requires a purposeful end-to-end redesign, where everyone in the organization knows the part they must play in the great Customer Experience act.

A company-wide Change Management process

Adaptability means change.

And change is risky if it is not managed properly.

The only sure thing in the near future is that organizations will have to be in a state of constant change and adaptation.

So a properly implemented Change Management process, that covers the whole organization, will be key to success.

Cost-efficient and frictionless technology adoption

There are many ways to acquire new technology.

A big corporation can sign up a contract with a big AI provider, and pay enormous amounts of money for a service they hope will give them an edge over their competition.

A small business cannot afford to be so careless.

But with some expert guidance, they could implement Open Source technology that can provide them the same level of benefit, but at a smaller scale (for a smaller business) at a fraction of the cost.

This way, being small can be turned into an advantage, not only in the size of the solutions required, but the speed at which those can be adopted.

While your bigger competitors are entangled in red tape and budget approvals, you’ll be already reaping the benefits of new technology that gives you the upper hand.

Making your own Adaptable Business

You have already taken the first steps into redesigning your business to become Adaptable, and making sure it will thrive during the Age of AI, by subscribing to my publication and reading this article.

But if you want to go further, here are several options:

• If you want to start right away, you can join me in my 3-day Future-Proof Entrepreneur Challenge, where you will learn how to analyze your Profit Model (how your business makes money today), look around for the Exponential Technologies you will need to make it work in the Age of AI, and finally create a plan to make it happen.

• You can check my FREE guide “7 Profit Models to Succeed in the Age of AI”.

• And also my FREE guide “7 New Technologies that can wreck your Business like Netflix wrecked Blockbuster”.

This is the time for swift action.

The asteroid didn’t wait for the dinosaurs to evolve, and the technological asteroid won’t wait either.

Talk to you soon,

Alfredo.

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Yesterday was one of those days.

You start with a list of stuff you want to accomplish.

Then, the unexpected rears its ugly head.

Those who already follow me know I’m a solopreneur and consultant.

A Software Engineer, turned into Customer Experience expert, but who also has devoted a lot of time to deep Computer Science stuff like Artificial Intelligence.

And with an MBA.

Everyday I wear many hats.

I have to.

So, I begun my day migrating some of my posts to Medium, because it has better discoverability.

And, you know… Content Marketing. Solopreneur. Many hats.

Then, I moved to make some tweaks to my Customer Experience webinar landing page.

(if you haven’t checked it yet, you should, it is FREE knowledge).

Before starting with the tweaks, I opened my Google Analytics dashboard, to check my current traffic and have a baseline for later comparisons.

And I noticed my custom events from Substack weren’t coming through.

If you also are a Substack writer, you know it provides very little information about traffic and your audience.

So, having the knowledge, one of the first things I did to my Substack was plugging it into Google Analytics.

Only to realize that the amount and type of information Substack reported to Google Analytics was as poor as the ones you could view in your Substack dashboard.

I wanted to know Likes, Restacks, Shares, Comments, etc!

But all I got were Page Views.

And those were a mix of myself editing my posts and people reading them.

Useless.

I decided that even if my publication is still growing, I would need that info over time, so better to start collecting it.

Rolled up my sleeves, created a Google Tag Manager container, connected it to Substack and started tinkering.

After a few headaches and a lot of reading, I got it working.

Now my Google Analytics dashboard could show me the amount of Real Page Views (not me editing posts), Likes, Restacks, Comments, Copied Links, Shares to Notes, Shares to Twitter (X now), etc.

This had been working great.

Until it wasn't.

And I just noticed it yesterday.

So, again, I rolled my sleeves and started the debug process, to find where the issue was.

I spent the better part of the day trying to find the issue in my Google Tag Manager configuration.

Until I remembered Google Analytics had announced some changes earlier this year, streamlining some technical stuff I won’t cover here.

And thinking about the changes, it came to me that perhaps having registered at the same time a Google Analytics ID and a Google Tag Manager on Substack could be the source of the problem.

So I removed the GA4 ID, and voilá!

The events started flowing again.

I took the opportunity to tweak some additional stuff, based on what I’ve learned during this year on Substack, and left it roaring like a well tuned engine.

But then, the day was gone, and my to do list was almost untouched.

Oh, well…

A solopreneur has to do what he has to do, right?

BTW, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Substack SEO, etc. isn’t the main topic of this publication.

But I’ve become pretty knowledgeable about it, out of necessity.

So, if you want some tips or instructions, drop me a line in the comments and I’ll be happy to help.

Thank you for reading, and see you next time!

When you are ready, here is how I can help you:

By subscribing to my publication and reading this article you have already taken the first steps into redesigning your business to succeed during the Age of AI, .

But if you want to go further, here are several options:

• If you want to start right away, you can join me in my 3-day Future-Proof Entrepreneur Challenge, where you will learn how to analyze your Profit Model (how your business makes money today), look around for the Exponential Technologies you will need to make it work in the Age of AI, and finally create a plan to make it happen.

• You can check my FREE guide “7 Profit Models to Succeed in the Age of AI”.

• And also my FREE guide “7 New Technologies that can wreck your Business like Netflix wrecked Blockbuster”.

The Entrepreneuring AI is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can let me know that my content is valuable by fueling my coffee addiction, so I can keep producing it for free 😸☕️

Buy me a coffee

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Yes. Deckard had to find out if she was a Replicant… and fast. One of the dangerous Nexus-6 android models that escaped, to be precise.

Replicants were physically and intellectually indistinguishable from common humans. A physician could examine them, take blood tests, and wouldn’t find a difference.

You could ask them questions about their past, their families, etc. and they would have answers as vivid and emotional as anyone’s.

But they weren’t capable of showing empathy. And that’s where the Voight-Kampff Test came in.

In today’s post:

• Where is AI taking us?: The advent of (narrow) AI is changing the way we learn, the way we work, etc.

Where is AI taking us?

Blade Runner came out in 1982. It revolves around Rick Deckard, a former police officer hunting down “replicants”: androids with advanced Artificial Intelligence.

Almost indistinguishable from humans, and created to be used in dangerous jobs and environments where humans didn’t want to go because of the risks, it’s only logical that periodically some of them attempted to escape.

And the interesting part is the “almost”. They were physically identical to humans. Also intellectually identical. You couldn’t screen a replicant from a human by knowledge tests nor physical ones.

But they lacked empathy. So, a psychological-technological test named the Voight-Kampff Test was devised.

AI all around us

The current AI we have isn’t, by far, something we can compare to Blade Runner’s AI (embedded in the Replicants).

I have written a bit about this in my post “Artificial Intelligence for Customer Experience”1. The current AI trend is what we call “Narrow AI”: capable of performing specific tasks better and faster than humans, but unable to generalize.

What we call AGI: Artificial General Intelligence, is still years away.

But what we have now is already having a profound impact in many things we do. And not necessarily for the better.

A few examples:

• Human Resources specialists start using AI to sift and classify candidates resumes. Then candidates start using Generative AI to apply en masse to job opportunities.

• Students start using Generative AI to cheat in their homework. Teachers start using AI prompts hidden as white colored text in the questions to force the AI to, covertly, show itself in the answers.

• Big law firms start using Generative AI to perform some of the tasks recent graduates did. Then they start rescinding job offers to many prospective candidates they would have usually hired.

• etc.

And some industries are already scared of the potential impact, and trying to prepare:

• The script writers are already fighting against the use of their copyrighted content to train AI systems that might start replacing them in the future.

• The amount of freelance gigs in platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, etc. related to copywriting and graphic design has dropped substantially.

• New AI tools like Sora promise to create short videos that previously required many specialists.

Will it come the time when we will have to publicize the fact that something has been created by a human vs having been created by an AI?

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Will we ever need a Voight-Kampff Test?

It is funny to think about it, but with each passing day it becomes harder to detect content created by AI.

We are already using AI systems to detect AI-generated content, because we would be unable to do it by ourselves.

At the same time, we already use AI models to create data that serves to train other AI models (synthetic data).

When will “AI-generated” stop being a derogative term, and become something desirable and marketable?

What are we doing, as individual persons and organizations to prepare for that moment?

As I explain in my article “How NOT to apply Artificial Intelligence in your Business”2, using AI for Customer Service isn’t necessarily a good idea in every case.

For now.

As the Replicants, current AI chatbots lack empathy (and many other human intelligence traits).

But, what if they get good enough to make us think they have? Will they replace overnight millions of Customer Service Representatives?

What shields us from being covertly served by AI systems instead of human individuals?

Some government bodies are already trying to regulate such things, as I discuss in “Prohibited Artificial Intelligence Practices in the European Union”3.

We are just at the beginning of it.

The Road Ahead

What do you think about this? Do you have a personal and organizational plan for the unavoidable changes that we are going to be part of?

Let me know in the comments!

When you are ready, here is how I can help you:

By subscribing to my publication and reading this article you have already taken the first steps into redesigning your business to succeed during the Age of AI, .

But if you want to go further, here are several options:

• If you want to start right away, you can join me in my 3-day Future-Proof Entrepreneur Challenge, where you will learn how to analyze your Profit Model (how your business makes money today), look around for the Exponential Technologies you will need to make it work in the Age of AI, and finally create a plan to make it happen.

• You can check my FREE guide “7 Profit Models to Succeed in the Age of AI”.

• And also my FREE guide “7 New Technologies that can wreck your Business like Netflix wrecked Blockbuster”.

The Entrepreneuring AI is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can let me know that my content is valuable by fueling my coffee addiction, so I can keep producing it for free 😸☕️

Buy me a coffee

Subscribe now

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References