Month: July 2025

Researching is a skill. Like any skill, you have this mental muscle you have to exercise. Simply asking Google or AI for the answer deteriorates this muscle. AI is a tool to INFORM decisions, not make them (unless we let them.)

Consequently, we begin to turn over decision-making to technology and remove ourselves from responsibility. The path forward that is opening (while many are closing) is more opportunity to lead and initiate. Not less. To make judgment calls. To act without a clear picture. Because the next chapter has perhaps never looked more murky, so what is ahead? (To state the obvious: we have never been here before, and no one knows what happens next.)

P.S. The point isn’t to get the quickest answer (we already have that tech to get that). We do the reading to find the best answer.

Truth becomes more scarce when we turn over moral judgment. In a world where the noise is louder than ever before, we have to take the time to decipher and decode what is being said more than ever. We have a bad habit of overreacting to the worst-case scenario, which amplifies the noise. If we are going to use AI to remove decisions (instead of enabling them), we are on the wrong path to finding the truth.

We can choose between high expectations, hope, and possibilities. But not all three.

When hope is high and expectations are low, we open the door to possibility.

When you flip it: high expectations and low hope—possibilities will dwindle.

Possibilities must be detached from our expectations.

Not long ago, you could get in on the ground with AI for thousands of dollars. And in a matter of a few short years, the capital needed is beyond what 99.9% of the population can afford. The biggest reason is the equipment and computing power required to push the technology forward. And it isn’t just AI. An industry that touts itself for living in mom’s basement and working in the garage to build billion-dollar businesses—those days might be gone in tech. The problem with projects of this magnitude is that you lose so much in developing talent when access to the technology is limited.

The problem with coaches, GMs, and players is that analytics provide a space to hide. If you decide against the numbers and lean towards gut/feel, you will be scrutinized when it doesn’t work out and asked, “Why did you ignore the numbers?” When you go with the numbers, and it doesn’t work out, you can say, “Hey, the math says this…” My buddy and I joke about when the Suns signed Tyson Chandler, saying he was “coming off his best statistical season.” But at that point, he was washed. The fact is, numbers tell a story. And if you wanted a robot to decide for us, the robot would make the best decision based on probability. But what makes humans great is that we make decisions despite the numbers. Context matters. Applying the data matters. Otherwise, what are coaches for?

My prediction: we will see again with AI what we saw with the quiet quitting movement with COVID. When we had to face the reality that our job mainly was bull shit and yet the demand was to return to work—we realized that we didn’t need to go back but it can be done in less than 40 hours per week. I think that conflict will pop up again.

When disparity became too much for peasants during Feudalism, there was pushback.

And when factories demanded too much from wage workers, there was pushback.

There comes a point when those in power feel the pushback of the masses.

The steam engine was invented and could have alleviated the use of enslaved people. But it didn’t until legislation stepped in. AI could enable the masses toward freedom, but it might not be used that way.

What’s the intent? And will there be pushback?

Culture says it’s appropriate to light fireworks on the 4th of July, but not so much on the 5th. The moment passes on what is relevant and what is not, so much so that the community can shame us, lower our status, and enforce behavior through laws to ensure compliance. How compliant we are, says so much about our status in the community.

Routines can ground us and settle us down. They’re a reliable, proven method for producing more reliable outcomes. But routines can also make us complacent. And if you want something that’s not routine, you might need to break it, at least once in a while.

In the same way, digital technology killed CDs, cassettes, and records.

One aspect of technology we don’t think about is how destructive (even violent) new technology can be.

No one cried for the scribe the printing press killed. What will be our response when AI takes the next leap?