Where AI Is Headed - And What We Should Be Paying Attention To

It’s easy to get distracted by the AI noise.

“AI is going to take all our jobs.”

“AI will save the world.”

“AI can write your marketing plan, build your funnel, and make your coffee.” (Though my coffee machine is close!)

That all sounds good in a keynote. But what's the reality?

Here’s what I’m seeing.

We’re at the point where AI, agents, and workflows are finally moving out of the lab and into the day-to-day. Not as some mythical overlords. As co-workers. Quiet ones. Fast, consistent, and tireless.

I think it's happened a lot slower than we thought, though. Definitely slower than the AI bros preached.

But it's definitely happening. And as it does become mainstream, there's a catch. One that throws a lot of people off.

You want the efficiency gains. And maybe some quick wins for your business. But AI doesn’t magically understand your business. It doesn’t know your workflow, your clients, or the real stuff that matters. That’s on you.

Want it to help write your marketing plan? Need it to help build your funnels? Or draft your content? Then you have to spend time training the AI tools and agents.

The companies that win the next 5 years won’t be the ones who buy the shiniest tools. They’ll be the ones who know how to embed the AI into the right parts of their business. The invisible stuff. The repetitive stuff. The time-sucking, soul-draining, brain-melting admin hell that no one wants to own.

I don't think it will feel like AI is doing everything. It’ll feel like friction just… disappeared.

And that’s not some distant future. That’s happening now - quietly, under the radar, inside small service businesses that got tired of patching together another SaaS subscription and pretending that’s “scaling.”

I know, because I'm building AI agents and automations that make that repetitive work easier. Or go away. But it definitely takes time to get right.

I don't think the direction of AI is towards sentient overlords. It’s toward invisibility. Embedded. Personalized. Boring, even.

And that’s a good thing. It means we get to stop treating AI like a party trick.

We stop asking what it can do and start asking what’s worth doing. What’s costing us time, energy, sanity? What’s getting in the way of focus, creativity, leadership?

And that’s where the real leverage is.

Because when you remove that noise, something surprising happens: You get to actually work on the business. You get to think strategically again. Hell, maybe take a vacation.