AI narratives and frenzy

AIbehavioureconomics

Here are some quick thoughts on AI adoption and productivity - part 2

Ship of Theseus, and pride in work

The Ship of Theseus is an ancient philosophical thought experiment about identity. It questions whether a ship remains the same object if all of its components are gradually replaced over time.

I have some pride in the memos I wrote and slides I created without any AI assistance. They were artisanal, organic and handcrafted artefacts priced at a premium.

If Claude replaces all the components of your memo, bit by bit, what would it take to call it yours and take pride in it?

If you are the “let’s get by” kind, you would use AI to impress and move on. But if you are the kind who wants to get better, you would end up spending a bit more time to make the output yours. If Claude creates an artefact, you would get mad about sections that are sub-par. You would try to absorb some details so that you can defend it to your manager, and correct sections if they are bizarre. You would not rubber stamp passively. Instead, you would quality check actively.

So, the memo becomes yours the moment it starts feeling like something you can rubber stamp under your name, even if all of its components have been replaced.

Narratives driving the shift

Human Narratives drive collective behaviour. Robert Shiller got a Nobel Prize for explaining this phenomenon. During the great depression in the 1920s, people postponed their purchases even if they had money. They did so to prepare for worse times or sometimes out of solidarity - “What will the suffering neighbours think? We are in this together”. Companies shed workforce in the name of “depression” even when they didnt have to - rendering more poeple jobless. Such loops kept the great depression alive for long.

Currently, the narrative of “Let’s change the way we work or we will get left behind” is one of several AI related narratives driving change. What’s likely to happen from here on?

  1. Following the narrative, some people working in the new way, because it is better. People justify it by saying that it saves time or produces better output. It does for the most part, but the driving force of collective behaviour change is the narrative.
  2. Then a new change comes up, and the changes stack on top of each other. 2 years later, companies that did not change their way of working might actually struggle if the learning curve of each stack is very steep. It’s not necessarily because workflows will be 10x efficient, rather they will be 10x different.

B2B customers are driving workflow change in different ways

It is no longer clear who will drive change for B2B firms. The slowest moving customers will add to maintenance overhead while others push for change. Like doctors in the US, who have to deal with software overhead, B2B firms might have to keep multiple operating models, and software systems alive (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/12/11/american-doctors-are-rich-and-miserable) 1. In the past, for B2B companies, slowest steps in the reaction dictated pace of change, and add to maintenance overhead. 1. Even today, even if law firms adopt AI, regulators and clients (e.g. legal team in banks) will push back. 2. Clients of accounting or consulting firms will hold them to older products 2. But, demanding customers will be workflow accelerators. 1. “We know you can write these copies and create videos faster and cheaper using AI, and we know that you have access to these tools” 3. Customers who have not seen Claude’s output might be impressed by interactive prototypes and ask for more prototypes, making B2B companies create custom dashboards or websites.

The AI frenzy - remember to be kind!

  1. You listen to 5 voices, all 5 doing something independently - but you assume everyone is doing everything. People are working differently, and many (including me) are working more than usual. But everyone is not doing everything. Remind yourself of that - it’s the kind thing to do.
  2. You are not alone in feeling exhausted. Even the greats like Simon Wilson are burning the midnight oil. Waiting for output is exhausting, and it severely limits the scope of any deep work.
  3. Brace yourself, and build resilience. I don’t think this feeling of “something new has launched, and we must integrate it in our workflows” is going away anytime soon. Products are genuinely exciting. FOMO and status signalling are pushing it forward. And changing workflows now is the right thing to do.