TWP: Tool Story

Hi friend,

A question I got twice this month, phrased slightly differently both times: “I'm using AI every day, so why does my week not feel any shorter?”

There is now a decent answer, and it is not a flattering one.

What's happening in AI right now:

TTEC Digital surveyed 150 people running customer and IT operations this week. Not one reported a cost reduction from AI. Zero. Two thirds said their costs went up.

The detail that matters for you sits underneath it. Sixty percent of them are running seven or more AI tools. Ninety percent feel confident using AI. All of them admit a skills gap. That is a very specific failure, and it is one you can check for in about five minutes. Count your AI subscriptions. Then count the tasks you have actually stopped doing since you started paying for them. If the first number is bigger than the second, you have bought tools rather than time.

Worth knowing if you run something small:

Census Bureau data has AI use at thirty percent for firms over 250 staff and seventeen percent for firms under twenty. Minneapolis Fed The gap is not really about budget. Large firms have someone whose job includes working out where the tool goes. In a small business that person is you, at 9pm, after everything else.

Something to try this week:

Pick one task you do every single week. Before you ask AI to help with it, ask this:

“Before you help me with this, tell me which parts of this task shouldn't exist at all.”

Most of us use AI to run our existing process faster. That is exactly how you end up in the zero percent, paying for speed on work that did not need doing. The question makes the model look at the job rather than at your request, and it is uncomfortably good at finding the report nobody reads and the approval step that approves everything.

You will disagree with half of what it says. The other half is your afternoon back.

Quote of the week:

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker

Written decades before any of this existed. Still the whole argument.

See you next week,

Shantanu

P.S. If someone forwarded this to you, you can subscribe at www.auracle.co.nz. Free, weekly, and roughly the length of a flat white.