A question for this room
How many of you feel anxious about your future because of AI?
Live Results
0 responses
Very anxious
0%
Somewhat
0%
Not really
0%
Excited
0%
Why am I trying to answer this for you?
A combination of three threads in my career gives me a unique lens on this question.
Productivity Research
I build Excel and Excel Agent at Microsoft. Office products have been the backbone of productivity across industries, functions, and profiles. Understanding how people are productive at work, and how AI can enhance it, has been a core research objective for the last two years.
Career Building
As prep head at IIM Calcutta, I mentored 1,000+ students across three batches to find the right career fit and break into their target industries. I continue to mentor students and professionals through career coaching and corporate learning programs.
AI Coaching
Coached 100+ product managers in India through career transitions. Now coaching 100+ trainers building AI PM programs across the US. This gives a practitioner's lens on how AI is reshaping career paths.
Productivity research + career building + AI coaching = a unique point of view on how AI changes careers.
"Self-claiming some AGI milestone is just nonsensical benchmark hacking to me. The real benchmark is the world growing at 10%."
Y = A · Kα · L(1-α)
Cobb-Douglas Production Function ↗
Y Output
Total GDP. Everything society produces.
A Total Factor Productivity
Fundamentally: technology & efficiency. The multiplier that drives growth. AI changes this.
K Capital
Machines, money, infrastructure. Concentrating fast.
L Labor
Human work. AI is replacing this.
For 250 years, technology (A) amplified labor (L). AI is the first technology that substitutes for it.
Every technology revolution has created new jobs to replace the ones it destroyed. Economists call the belief that there's only so much work to go around the "lump of labor fallacy." But this time, the debate is genuinely open.
Sam Altman
CEO, OpenAI
"AI will create new kinds of jobs we can't even imagine. The economy will grow. Everything gets cheaper."
Sam Altman
Same person, different day
"Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop." AI will replace "95% of what marketers, strategists, creative professionals use agencies for."
Daron Acemoglu
MIT · Nobel Prize 2024
"If we go down this path of destroying jobs, U.S. democracy is not going to survive." Warns of "so-so automation".
David Autor
MIT Economics
"AI can democratize expertise: nurses doing what doctors do, paralegals doing what lawyers do. This could rebuild the middle class."
The honest answer: nobody knows. Even the same person contradicts themselves. That's what makes this moment so important.
L1 Conversational
ChatGPT, Claude · Nov 2022
L2 Reasoning
o1, o3, DeepSeek R1 · Sep 2024
L3 Agents
WE ARE HERE · 2025
L4 Innovators
Novel discoveries · ~2027-28?
L5 Organizations
Full autonomy · ~2030s?
Source: OpenAI, Bloomberg Jul 2024 ↗
L1 → L2: 2 years · L2 → L3: 1 year · Accelerating
Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns
Each paradigm shift happens faster than the last
Compute per dollar: 20 quadrillion-fold increase over 120 years
2029: Turing test · 2045: Singularity (Kurzweil, 2005)
L1 Conversational
→
L2 Reasoning
→
L3 Agents
→
L4 Innovators
→
L5 Organizations
WE ARE HERE · 2025
What is an agent?
A system that repeatedly pursues a goal by:
i) Planning and Reasoning
Breaking down complex goals into steps, evaluating options, making decisions
ii) Acting on the Environment using Tools
Writing code, searching the web, calling APIs, sending messages, editing files
iii) Context and Memory
Retaining knowledge across interactions, learning from past outcomes, building on prior work
AI agents are already here
Coding Agent
Reads specs, writes code, runs tests, fixes bugs, deploys
Claude Code
Cursor
Copilot
Devin
Research Agent
Searches, reads papers, synthesizes findings, generates reports
Perplexity
Deep Research
Elicit
Customer Service Agent
Handles queries, resolves issues, escalates when needed, 24/7
Sierra AI
Intercom Fin
Zendesk AI
Data Analysis Agent
Queries databases, finds patterns, creates visualizations
Julius AI
Databricks
Copilot
Creative Agent
Generates copy, designs, produces content, iterates on feedback
Jasper
Canva AI
Midjourney
Information Work Agent
Drafts documents, manages email, schedules meetings, summarizes threads
Claude Cowork
Microsoft Copilot
These aren't predictions. These are reports from the field.
Andrej Karpathy
@karpathy
"I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored... some powerful alien tool was handed around... the resulting magnitude 9 earthquake is rocking the profession."
Boris Cherny
Creator of Claude Code, Anthropic
"In the last 30 days, I landed 259 PRs, 497 commits, 40k lines added. Every single line was written by Claude Code. I shipped 22 PRs yesterday and 27 the day before, each one 100% written by Claude."
Andrej Karpathy
@karpathy
"There's a new kind of coding I call 'vibe coding', where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists."
Dario Amodei
CEO, Anthropic
"AI is writing 90% of the code." (March 2025) Six months later: "Within Anthropic, that prediction is absolutely true."
Google: 30%+ of code AI-generated (Pichai, Q1 2025)
95% of engineers use AI tools weekly (Pragmatic Engineer, 2026)
Fewer engineers needed
Single engineers with AI agents replace entire teams. Companies need 1/3 the headcount for the same output.
Roles are merging
Designers write code. PMs create prototypes. Engineers handle product strategy. Specialization is losing value.
The "Builder" emerges
One person who can ideate, design, code, ship, and market. Breadth matters more than depth.
This entire deck was built through vibe coding. I wrote zero lines of code. I have no training in writing code.
Boris Cherny
Creator of Claude Code, Anthropic
LENNY'S PODCAST
"By the end of the year, the title software engineer is going to start to go away and be replaced by builder."
Feb 2026 ·
Fortune ↗
N
Naval Ravikant
@naval
"Vibe coding is the new product management. Training and tuning models is the new coding."
Feb 2026 ·
View on X ↗
G
Garry Tan
CEO, Y Combinator
"In the age of prompting and vibe coding, everyone's a PM now."
May 2025 ·
Vanta ↗
J
Jackie Bavaro
Author, "Cracking the PM Interview"
"Vibe coding is a dream come true for PMs: all the skills we've built working with engineers are exactly what you need to work with an AI teammate."
: The Human Edge
YESTERDAY
TODAY
COMPANIES NOW REQUIRING PMs TO VIBE CODE
Google
Vibe coding interview round for AI PMs
Meta
PMs vibe code prototypes for Zuckerberg
Microsoft
AI fluency expected across all PM levels
Stripe · Netflix · Figma · Perplexity · Vercel
Adding AI prototyping to PM hiring
If you can vibe code it, it's feasible. The prototype becomes the starting point.
Carnegie Mellon now teaches vibe coding to PM students · Collins Dictionary 2025 Word of the Year: vibe coding
Agency + Taste
Direction, judgment, and aesthetic sense. The why, not the how.
↑
Cognitive
Replaces thinking itself. Analysis, judgment, creativity, strategy.
Information
Replaced clerical work
Electrical
Replaced repetitive operations
Physical
Replaced manual labor
Each revolution displaced a human capability. AI displaces cognition. What remains above it is yours.
Garry Tan @garrytan
CEO, Y Combinator
"Intelligence is on tap and humans must provide the agency and taste."
Paul Graham @paulg
Co-founder, Y Combinator
"When anyone can make anything, the big differentiator is what you choose to make."
Sam Altman @sama
CEO, OpenAI
"Agency, willfulness, and determination will likely be extremely valuable."
306
S&P 500 companies cited AI on
earnings calls (Q3 2025)
earnings calls (Q3 2025)
3.6x the 10-year average
+8.2pp
Stock outperformance of companies
that mention AI vs. those that don't
that mention AI vs. those that don't
FactSet, YTD Q3 2025
44%
of S&P 500 now list AI expertise
in director qualifications
in director qualifications
Up from 26% one year ago
Jensen Huang
CEO, NVIDIA
"You're not going to lose your job to an AI. You're going to lose your job to someone who uses AI."
All-In Podcast, Jul 2025
Marc Benioff
CEO, Salesforce
"We are the last generation of CEOs to manage only humans. Every CEO in the future will manage both humans and agents."
Davos, Jan 2025
Jamie Dimon
CEO, JPMorgan Chase
"There will be no job, no process, no function that won't be affected by AI. It's about getting people to understand the power of it."
JPM Investor Day, Feb 2026
The pressure flows downward: investors, boards, CEOs. The opportunity flows to whoever figures out how to diffuse AI across the organization.
Instruct AI with precision. Clarity is the new management skill.
Measure AI output quality. If you can't evaluate, you can't improve.
Andrej Karpathy @karpathy
Ex-Tesla AI, Ex-OpenAI
"The hottest new programming language is English."
Sam Altman @sama
CEO, OpenAI
"Figuring out what questions to ask will be more important than figuring out the answer."
Garry Tan @garrytan
CEO, Y Combinator
"Being able to do evaluations of what models and what prompts are good... That's actually turning out to be the moat for many startups."
poly·math
/ˈpɒlɪmaθ/
— person of wide knowledge across multiple fields.
Leonardo da Vinci: painter, engineer, anatomist, architect, inventor. The original one-person team.
→ AI is making this achievable for everyone.
WHAT WE'RE SEEING
Roles Are Fusing
Specialists built the old world. AI collapses boundaries between disciplines. A single person now has the toolkit of an entire team: design, code, market, analyze.
Abstraction Upward
Entry-level execution is being filled by agent workforces. Humans move upward to strategy, judgment, and orchestration. The floor rises.
The Gap Narrows
As agents handle more of the value chain, the distance between capital owners and the working individual (labor) shrinks dramatically. Everyone becomes closer and closer to becoming a capital owner itself.
THE OPPORTUNITY
The One-Person Billion-Dollar Company
A single founder with AI agents can ideate, build, ship, market, and scale. The generalist who understands the whole system wins.
Sam Altman @sama
CEO, OpenAI
"...there's this betting pool for the first year that there is a one-person billion-dollar company."
Alexis Ohanian @alexisohanian
Co-founder, Reddit
"...a single-person company had no chance of reaching a billion-dollar valuation. But now thanks to all this AI, it is."
WHERE WE'RE HEADED
L5 OrganizationsAI runs end-to-end
L4 Innovators~2027-28
L3 Agents◀ WE ARE HERE (2025)
L2 Reasoners2024
L1 Chatbots2023
"I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been."
Wayne Gretzky
We can't optimize for where we are today. We have to prepare for where AI will take us.
AND THAT BRINGS US TO THE ABUNDANCE ERA
When AI reaches L4-L5, it doesn't just execute. It innovates. Problems unsolved for decades become tractable. Technology compounds so fast that our ability to address humanity's biggest challenges explodes.
Sam Altman @sama
CEO, OpenAI
"In the 2030s, intelligence and energy are going to become wildly abundant. The ability for one person to get much more done will be a striking change."
"We won't experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century. It will be more like 20,000 years of progress."
Ray Kurzweil, Law of Accelerating Returns
Each of you will have the opportunity to find a unique value proposition, build your own AI organization, and solve problems that matter. The problem space is no longer closed. It's wide open.