Reflexive AI: Adapt or Become Obsolete

Forbes

18-07-2025

Every Company Is Now a Tech Company. Every Employee Too
For decades, people claimed every company was becoming a technology company. For the most part, that wasn't true, especially for employees. Now it is. Technology is at the core of every business, and artificial intelligence is the tipping point. The implications are massive. From the CEO to the first-year intern, everyone is on the front lines of change. The expectations are no longer abstract. You need to understand your business or function, and you need to understand AI. If you don't, you won't just fall behind. You'll be replaced. This isn't an Isaac Asimov science fiction novel. It's 2025. And the urgency is real. What was once theoretical is now a professional survival skill. Just as past generations had to learn Excel, today's workforce must learn to work with AI. It must become a reflexive in every part of one's work. Shopify founder Tobi Lütke calls it 'Context Engineering.' Others call it Prompt Engineering. Either way, it requires a new mindset. We must shift from operating on autopilot to deliberately starting everything we do with AI. This shift is not optional. Employees who don't adapt are not just slower. They are at serious risk of becoming unemployable. This transition is harder because it isn't like mobile adoption, which quietly integrated itself into our lives. This is more like learning a professional skill from scratch. Excel wasn't imposed on you. You had to decide to learn it. The same applies here. And the consequences of staying on the sidelines now are far more severe. Those who do not actively adopt AI risk losing their place in the workforce altogether.SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 06: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (R) speaks as OpenAI CEO Sam ... More Altman (L) looks on during the OpenAI DevDay event on November 06, 2023 in San Francisco, California. Altman delivered the keynote address at the first ever Open AI DevDay conference. (Photo by)It's Not a Tool. It's the Default
Much of the writing on AI focuses on industry transformation. Law, medicine, consulting, finance, all gaining speed and efficiency as AI processes and synthesizes massive data sets. What gets less attention is what this means for every employee. The transformation is not limited to professions. It will reshape every desk job in every office, everywhere. This is not about playing with ChatGPT or Claude on your phone in your downtime. AI is not an app. It must become the foundation of how you think, plan, and produce. Your workflow needs to begin with it, not end with it. It should be the instinctive first move, like checking your email or opening a spreadsheet used to be. If you want to accelerate your career, this is the opportunity. Immersing yourself in AI tools will not just increase your productivity. It will set you apart. People who work with AI are not just faster. They are more capable, more agile, and more valuable. Employees who adopt it early will leapfrog their peers. Some will leapfrog their bosses. Those who delay, ignore, or minimize it will lose ground quickly. AI isn't a trend. It is now the foundation of competitive advantage, both personally and organizationally.AI Will Reshape Companies at Every Level
AI is going to change the structure and speed of organizations. Fewer people will be needed to do the same volume of work. Teams will shrink. Layers will disappear. Companies will become flatter and faster. The result will not be incremental. It will be a redefinition of how work gets done. In the most forward-leaning organizations, this shift is already happening. AI agents are doing the research, analysis, and synthesis in real time. Human teams now bring judgment, leadership, and strategic thinking to the results. The task of work is shifting from execution to decision-making. This will fundamentally alter how contribution is measured. Historically, activity was the proxy for value. Employees who produced slides, wrote briefs, conducted research, or prepared summaries were considered productive. That model is rapidly collapsing. The premium is shifting from action to intention. The value is not in the work itself, but in the thinking that shapes it. AI's strength is content. Ours is context. The people who can guide the agents to produce meaningful, relevant, and actionable results will be the ones who rise. Context engineering is about asking the right questions, steering the AI, making fast calls. This is the new differentiator. Every interaction improves the tool. The more you engage with AI, the sharper it becomes. The return on that investment is exponential. Timelines collapse, and what once took months now takes hours. You no longer need three meetings to align on an analysis. The results are immediate, and they speak for themselves. The pace is only going to accelerate, and in that environment, the capacity for judgment, trust, and leadership becomes more, not less, important.WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 13: (L-R) NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta CEO ... More Mark Zuckerberg visit before attending the "AI Insight Forum" (Photo by)
A Window of Acceleration or Obsolescence
This is a career-defining moment. The AI shift is not coming. It is here. For employees at every level, this is the time to integrate it into your work and become fluent. The window to stand out has opened, but it will also close quickly. Those who learn to work with AI will rise, while those who do not will be overtaken by it. We are already seeing companies adjust. Leaders are restructuring and flattening teams, while drastically reducing headcount. Bank of America, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and Proctor & Gamble are just a small sample of the Companies following this trend. Publicly, this looks like efficiency. Internally, it's an acknowledgment that AI is enabling them to do more with less. Hiring trends confirm it. Many companies have instituted quiet hiring freezes or paused general recruitment all together. Departing employees are not being replaced unless the role is tied to AI expertise. Growth is being achieved through automation and intelligent systems, not headcount. This is not conjecture, it is already happening right in front of employees.The Job Market Is Already Telling the Truth
The top-line unemployment numbers look healthy but talk to a recent college graduate or a mid-level white-collar worker. Many will tell you the job market is frozen. Openings are scarce, and competition is high. AI capabilities are increasingly a baseline expectation, not a bonus capability, and the market has shifted as the demand for AI-fluent workers is rising. The jobs are for those who aren't complacent and are leveraging AI to be more efficient and effective. For those who don't adapt and make AI a reflexive skill, the job market of 1991 will soon look like a boom year.Close-up of a person's hand holding an iPhone and using Google AI Mode, an experimental mode ... More utilizing artificial intelligence and large language models to process Google search queries, Lafayette, California, March 24, 2025. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)