Happy 2026, everyone. We finally made it to the future, and while I'm still waiting on my flying car and a robot that can successfully fold my laundry without "forgetting" a sock, we have arrived at a much stranger destination.
We live in a world where answers are free, instant, and everywhere. But here is the catch: because everyone has the answer, most don't seem to remember how to ask the question.
The superpower of being a skeptic
There was a time, ancient history really, around 2021 or 2022, when we actually had to work for our information. Remember Stack Overflow? It was the digital town square where developers went to argue, learn, and occasionally get told their question was a duplicate.
If you look at the charts today, that platform has effectively flatlined. We traded the messy, human process of peer-reviewed debugging for the clean, instant gratification of a chat box. But in that trade, we lost something vital: the power of knowing.
See source: Stack Overflow usage
Your real superpower in the future is not how well you can prompt an AI. It is your ability to question the response you get. Only through your own knowledge and the scars of actual experience can you validate if a response is genius or just a very confident lie.
The "good enough" trap
Here is the reality of the AI era. If you do not know the subject matter, the AI response will seem like magic. It will be "good enough" for you. But if you actually know your craft, you will realize that the AI output is often shallow, incomplete, or missing the nuance that separates a product from a prototype.
Now, let's imagine the kids graduating in the future. They have grown up in a world where the "answer" was always a click away. Are they going to be able to tell the difference? Or are they going to be stuck in a loop of information and misinformation that served as their entire education?
If we stop struggling with problems, our minds risk becoming stateless. We stop building the neural connections that made us a continuously evolving species. We risk stagnating into a version of humanity that can execute instructions but can no longer innovate.
Stay curious, stay foolish
Steve Jobs was onto something when he told us to stay hungry and stay foolish. Innovation does not come from the most efficient path, it comes from the weird, friction-filled path of human curiosity.
Every once in a while, do yourself a favor and don't use the AI. Struggle with the code. Research the manual. Think until your brain hurts. If we delegate our thinking entirely, we aren't just saving time. We are retiring our intellect.
The only business moat left
For the founders and business leaders reading this: how do you stay relevant when the "expert" level of any role is now available to anyone for the price of a monthly subscription?
Software is no longer a moat. Your fancy office doesn't matter. Even your headcount is becoming a secondary metric. There is only one currency left that actually holds value: your private data.
The knowledge your company has acquired over years of wins and losses, the specific data points on how your customers behave, and the private insights you have kept off the public internet: that is your gold.
If you want to survive the next decade, protect your data. Keep it private. Use it to generate value that no generic model can replicate. In a world where everything is "expertly" the same, the only thing that matters is what only you know.
The bottom line
Keep your data close and your curiosity closer. Let's be more than just a well-crafted prompt. Use the tools, but don't let the tools use you. After all, if we all start thinking like the machines we built, then the machines have already won.
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers. - Sydney J. Harris
Stay human. Stay weird. See you out there. 🎤
