Curated Newsletter Series: AI & Technology Futures
This post curates TBD Futures newsletter articles on AI and technology futures, organized by theme, for business leaders who need a clear-eyed view of what AI is actually redesigning — and what that means for strategy, talent, and competitive positioning.
Every executive conversation I have right now circles back to some version of these questions. They don't have clean answers, which is exactly why better data alone won't solve them. Futures thinking trains you to spot the signals that matter before they become someone else's competitive advantage, and to prepare for a wider range of outcomes than the base case your strategy team is modeling.
Should we be moving faster with AI, or just moving fast for the wrong reasons?
What happens to our business model when expertise becomes a commodity?
How do we scale with AI without losing the trust and loyalty we've spent years building?
What second-order effects are already in motion that aren't showing up on anyone's dashboard?
Who, or what, will be making decisions in five years, and are we prepared for that?
The articles below make that thinking practical for leaders who need to act, curated from my bi-weekly newsletter tbdfutures.substack.com
Articles in This Series
On AI Strategy & Investment
AI: From Cost Center to Growth Catalyst Most leaders are using AI to protect the bottom line. Its trillion-dollar potential lies in inventing the future. A breakdown of how AI is shifting from efficiency machine to growth powerhouse and what that means for your competitive strategy.
The AI Cash Compass: Investment Trends & Future Direction Where is AI investment actually flowing, and what do early signals tell us about where momentum is heading? A deep dive into government and corporate AI spending, the shift toward smaller models, and what it means for leaders planning 3-5 year horizons.
Running Faster to Fall Further Behind: AI in Financial Services Financial institutions dabbling with AI, a chatbot here, a pilot there, are not just behind the curve. They're at serious risk of being left behind altogether. What the leaders getting it right are actually doing differently.
On AI & Human Experience
The Empathy-Throughput Tradeoff: Can AI-Enabled Scale Preserve What Matters? The pressure to do more with less is real, and so is the risk of quietly designing out the human connection that builds lasting loyalty. This piece names the tradeoff and makes the case that it's a design choice, not an inevitability.
The Doctor Will Algorithm You Now: AI's Role in Modern Medicine From patient diagnosis to clinical research, AI is reshaping healthcare faster than most institutions are ready for. A sector-specific deep dive into where it's working, where it's falling short, and what the next wave means for leaders in healthcare and adjacent industries.
The Human Edge: The Enduring Value of Human Skills As AI takes on more cognitive work, the skills that remain distinctly human, creativity, empathy, judgment, the ability to lead through ambiguity, are becoming more strategically valuable, not less. Here's what that actually means for how you build your organization.
On AI's Second-Order Effects
Still Asking Horse Questions? Part I The automobile's biggest impact wasn't replacing horses. It was inventing the suburb, the teenager, and the oil war. Nobody planned any of that. This piece looks at six second-order implications of AI already in motion that most organizations aren't modeling.
Still Asking Horse Questions? Part II (coming soon) The implication that doesn't show up in any economic forecast, and may be the biggest one of all. Plus a genuine counterargument: what if the urgency is overstated? And three questions every leader should be sitting with right now.
Is Your Next Boss a Bot? A platform launched where AI agents hire humans for physical tasks. Most people shrugged. An analysis of what this early signal actually tells us about where power, work, and automation are heading.
On AI Tools & Practical Literacy
The Great Relearning: What AI Reminds Us About Education and Work Up to 50% of today's work activities could be automated, but widespread adoption will take decades and the skills gap is already widening. What leaders need to understand about building organizations that can actually keep up.
The Quantum Self: The Rise of Digital Cloning Digital clones, AI-powered replicas of real people, are moving from science fiction to startup reality faster than most people realize. What this trend means for personal branding, intellectual property, and the future of expertise at scale.
The Cautionary Tales of Tech & AI Hardware Products The Humane AI Pin. The Rabbit R1. A graveyard of over-promised AI gadgets and what their failure tells us about the gap between hype and product-market fit, and what to watch for next.
On AI Through a Cultural & Historical Lens
Has the Future Already Been Written? Part I Gibson's Neuromancer predicted our digital addiction. Dick explored artificial emotions. Stephenson imagined AI-powered education. How the novels we dismissed as fantasy became the headlines we live in, and what the ones we haven't read yet might already be telling us.
Has the Future Already Been Written? Part II Orwell's surveillance society. Atwood's truth decay. Adams' freedom-versus-comfort tradeoff. Are we on the path these writers warned us about, or is there still time to rewrite the ending?
A Note on How I Think About AI (the TBD Futures Perspective)
I'm neither an evangelist nor an alarmist, and I've found both positions tend to be more about comfort than clarity. As a futurist, my job is to hold multiple futures at once, find the signal inside the noise, and ask the questions that aren't on anyone's dashboard yet. AI isn't a problem to solve or a wave to ride. It's a force reshaping the operating environment for every organization, and a lot of that reshaping is still only partially visible.
Most leaders I talk to already sense this. What they're looking for is a way to think about it that doesn't collapse into either panic or hype. That's what this work is built to offer.
Explore more at TBD Futures or get in touch to talk about how futures thinking can help your organization navigate what's coming.
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