If you're a recent graduate struggling to land that first role, you're not imagining things. A new paper examining millions of American workers reveals something stark: since ChatGPT went mainstream in late 2022, employment for workers aged 22-25 in AI-exposed occupations has plummeted 13% relative to their older colleagues. The traditional career ladder assumed you started at the bottom and climbed up. AI just removed the bottom rungs entirely.
The Great Inversion: How AI Flipped Copyright Inside Out
In 2020, my manager rejected a candidate for plagiarism. In 2024, Anthropic paid $1.5 billion for using pirated books to train Claude, even though a judge ruled the actual training was "fair use."
Welcome to the World Where Everyone is a Writer and Nobody Reads
Writing that actually moves us requires precisely what AI eliminates: the messy human struggle. George Saunders calls this your "iconic space": the place from which you write stories only you could write. I ask my readers: what will you write that only you can write?
Why Retrieval Practice Beats Endless Study
The ability to pull information from memory in a challenging environment > Constant reading, reviewing and preparing tonnes of notes.
The End of Pretend Work: When AI Exposes What Was Never There
For decades, white-collar work consisted of generating impressive-looking documents that few people read carefully and even fewer verified. This work felt productive. It kept people busy. It generated revenue. It filled time. This is why I call AI a white-collar revolution. It’s doing what the industrial revolution did to many blue collar jobs of its time. It changed what constituted value and forced people to add value in new ways.
Why AI Made Marketing Generalists Unstoppable
"Pick a lane and stay in it." For decades, this was our career insurance policy. Specialize. Build your moats. Become indispensable. But AI just bulldozed those barriers. Now synthesis matters more than specialization. AI accidentally brought back the Renaissance generalist. Leonardo da Vinci would dominate today's marketing world. The ability to synthesize, not specialize, is the new competitive edge.
The Agentic AI Wake-Up Call: 4 Takeaways from McKinsey’s Report
About 80% of companies use GenAI. 80% of them report ZERO bottom-line impact. McKinsey’s latest report calls this the GenAI paradox. What’s the way out then? AI agents that automate complex business processes. Today, we’re at a moment of strategic divergence. Companies that figure AI out first won't just gain efficiency—they'll redefine their industries.
Musings by Madhav 