“What’s a 3rd rodeo?”
“What is an AI Power User?”
You know the term, “this ain’t my first rodeo?” We found ourselves repeating this phrase over and over for the past few months on over 50 stages all across the world when we talked about the tech industry’s overnight shift into becoming AI-obsessed.
After we explained the concept of the third rodeo to lots of people, lots of you asked, “Is this written down somewhere?”
Well, now it is!
So here we go: Welcome to Third Rodeo AI.
This AI era that’s taken over our lives is not our first rodeo.
We’re now full on in the THIRD rodeo. We need to re-learn how to both build and use apps, websites, services, etc.
The good news is that we have been through this before. Walking through history, we once used to do all our work on sheets of paper (some of you youths are wondering, “what are sheets of paper?”)
Then came the rodeos:
🐎First rodeo: Computing reached regular people around the mid-1990s. Most of us had normal apps that worked on a desktop. Think Solitaire & Minesweeper to waste time, and Paint, Outlook, Word, Excel, etc to do Real Work. These were not connected to the internet at first but later on they were. It was not assumed that these apps would always have connectivity.
🐎Second rodeo: The next wave of computing hit around the early 2000s. The apps developed were web-by-design and then mobile-by-design. These are things like Google docs, Azure portal and Uber. It was assumed they would almost always have connectivity.
🐎Third rodeo: We are now here in the mid-2020s. Apps being built will not only have connectivity assumed, but connectivity to some AI-model assumed. That means these apps will have calls to an AI API in order to “do things” in the background for us. Think spellcheck, but way WAY more advanced. Some early apps in this space are ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Canva but LOTS more products are coming!
Given that we had to learn how to use apps and websites and such during each of these rodeos, it’s time to get a bit more serious about how AI relates to our work. Since everyone will need to learn to use AI in their work at some point…why not soonish?
Do you know what an AI Power User is? This is a person who is reshaping their job, their role and their industry with AI rather than falling for the old “You will be replaced with AI” drama. You can read all about it here.
Reading this study and spending the past 1.5 years skilling up lots of people with AI got us thinking. How can we teach people how to become an AI Power Users in a systematic, organized way – rather than it becoming some random firedrill for you at 8am on a Monday?
Given that Chief AI Officers and AI transformation leaders are real jobs now and every organization and their parent company want one…you have likely been tapped to do this job…or are interested in being tapped to do this job. Why would you want to be tapped? Because $$$$$. Serious $$$$$.
In this diary series, we will give you all the information we are gathering in real time on how to lead in the AI-verse in your specific job and industry.
In this series, we will NOT train you to become a machine learning engineer (if you are interested in this, there are PLENTY of free resources on DeepLearning.ai). We are NOT going to do extensive testing on every new AI model or shiny new AI tool that comes out daily (the differences between them don’t really make game-changing differences in day-to-day life for most people). Lastly, we are NOT going to act like spectacular know-it-alls and claim there is ONE WAY to succeed in the AI-verse (there are more ways than there are AI products!) and honestly NO ONE knows what the next 5 years looks like, no matter how much of an “expert” they claim to be.
Instead we are going to focus on things we actually CAN control: your job and career, a thing that is relatable for MOST of us.
In your job you might be tasked to figure out the overall AI strategy for your company (will you build AI models or use pre-existing models?), choose AI products that will help your business (will you build these products or buy them?) or come up with scenarios that AI is good for or not (what kind of prompts are best for lawyers drafting contracts?) or be in the business of driving AI adoption for your organization and get everyone to actively think of using AI in their day-to-day jobs.
For our day jobs, we work deep in the AI space at Very Large Companies but more important, we work WITH a whole bunch of organizations (Giant companies! Med sized companies! Small companies! Education! Gov!) to plan and implement their AI strategies. Our background is traditional computer science where we studied Machine Learning once upon a time…and in the past 25 years of being in the industry we have NEVER seen anything gain interest and adoption like AI has.
We originally wrote this as a private series for ourselves so we could better advise our close friends who are working in this space, but after 5 seconds of thought, we decided to just share it with all of you in real time.
We don’t want this to be a one-sided relationship – so as you proceed with your own journey in the AI-verse, please holla back at us with what you’re up to and your thoughts on where things are headed. We’d love to feature your stories as well as and when you’re ready!
It’s been a wild ride, friends! It will only get wilder. Are you ready to future-prep your career to not just survive, but THRIVE in the AI-verse?
This ain’t your neighborhood tech-bro’s newsletter. This will be all about YOU.
Let’s hustle!
✨Dona & Jeremiah ✨