The Clockwork Race – Humans vs. Machines

NT. COFFEE SHOP – MORNING

The place is buzzing. Tech startup types with their glowing laptops, steaming cups of overpriced caffeine, and air pods lodged firmly in their ears like digital lifelines.

You’re living in a world where the ground is shifting under your feet faster than ever. AI isn’t just moving – it’s sprinting. In the last decade, the compute power driving the biggest AI models has increased by 300,000×, doubling every 3.4 months. That’s not evolution, that’s a digital wildfire. And if you’re moving at a human pace, you’re already behind.

Here’s the cold, hard truth: the average “half-life” of a skill is now just 5 years. That means that half of what you know right now – the code you write, the frameworks you build, the strategies you lean on – will be outdated before your next career move. In tech, it’s even worse. Some skills have a half-life as short as 2.5 years. Imagine you spent two years learning to build beautiful front-end experiences in Angular. By the time you master it, half those skills are already as old as MySpace.

And it’s not just about learning new tools. It’s about learning to think faster, adapt quicker, and pivot harder than ever. Remember AlphaGo? In 2015, it didn’t just beat the best human Go player – it did so by teaching itself strategies that took humans centuries to develop. It rewrote the playbook, and it didn’t ask for permission.

80% of executives believe AI will completely change their industries within the next five years. Not might. Will. And they’re right – we’re talking about a world where 40% of all working hours could be impacted by AI, transforming the skills you need to stay relevant. If that doesn’t make you a little uncomfortable, you’re not paying attention.

But here’s the thing – humans have one massive advantage over machines: we can adapt creatively. We can think laterally, emotionally, and socially in ways that machines can only dream of (if they ever do). We can see connections in chaos, tell stories from data, and find meaning in the noise. We have the power to innovate, to create, to lead.

But only if we stay sharp. Only if we keep learning

See you on the bright side,

George