Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 516: AI or You're Fired? Why Duolingo and Shopify's New Hiring Rulebook Will Be The Norm

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

AI or you're fired?That's kinda been the trending train of thought recently with Duolingo and Shopify's new statements on AI in the workplace. Some people are shocked. We're not.��We'll explain why this seemingly shocking workplace rulebook will become the new norm. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Thoughts on this? Join the convo.Upcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:AI Hiring Rulebook: Use It or Be FiredDuolingo & Shopify's AI Initiative AnalysisAI Native Organization Best PracticesAI's Impact on Hiring PracticesDuolingo's Shift to AI-First OperationsShopify's AI Proof Requirement ExplainedEffect of AI on Entry-Level JobsCompany Adaptation to AI WorkforceTimestamps:00:00 AI or Be Fired?02:50 Daily AI News09:34 Workplace Software Recommendations13:53 AI First, Human Second15:15 Duolingo Shifts to AI-Driven Courses20:23 AI's Transformative Impact on Business24:38 "AI Boosts Productivity in Enterprises"25:45 AI Impact on Entry-Level Jobs29:15 AI's Impact: Adapt or Pivot34:19 AI Hiring: Balancing Benefits and Overreliance37:22 Strategic Staffing and AI Integration40:31 Embrace AI, Evolve Workforce42:58 AI Impact on Job SecurityKeywords:AI native, AI first, Duolingo, Shopify, AI hiring rulebook, employee AI usage, AI-generated code, Microsoft, Sadia Nadella, AI code generation, Python, Google Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, AI models, competitive AI ecosystem, AI-powered tools, AI sector growth, workplace AI adaptation, AI anxiety, AI proof of necessity, AI productivity, online learning, automated course production, scalability with AI, customer service AI, data collection, AI-driven projects, AI-founded roles, workforce AI integration, AI proficiency, AI literacy, AI upskilling, AI training, digital transformation, exec dissatisfaction, AI implementation, hiring AI systems, local AI regulation, AI in education, workforce transformation.Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. You should probably have more AIs on your team or in your company than humans.

Let me repeat that. You should probably have more AIs in your company or your department or your organization than humans. And I do think employees top to bottom should be forced to use. AI. So we're going to be talking about that today and going over why Duo Lingo and Shopify's new kind of AI hiring rulebook will actually be the new norm. Because they're essentially saying, hey, use AI or you're fired, right? Use AI or you're not working here.

Use AI, you know, justify why AI can't. to do something if you're requesting, you know, more resources. I think this week or the last, you know, week and a half, there's been a lot of public reaction to both Shopify and Duo Lingo's new kind of AI native strategy that I'm kind of scratching my head and I'm like, why? I think this is dead simple and you do need as many or more AIs in your organization than humans. All right. We're going to talk about and a lot more on everyday AI. What's going on, y'all? My name is Jordan Wilson.

I'm the host, and this thing is for you. It's your daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter, helping us all not just keep up with AI, but how we can use it to get ahead, grow our companies, and our careers. If that sounds exactly what you're trying to do, you're in the right place. Welcome, your second home. It starts here on the live stream slash podcast.

This is where you learn, but where you can actually leverage it and make sense of all this information. is on our website, your everyday AI.com. So each and every day, we recap the live stream slash podcast in our free daily newsletter, as well as give you all the AI news and AI updates you need to be the smartest person in AI at your company. All right.

So I am excited today to talk a little bit about this new concept of, hey, use AI or you're fired and diving into kind of duolingo and Shopify and kind of their new initiatives. But before we get into that, let's first start as we do most days by going over the AI news for today, May 1st. All right. So Microsoft CEO, Sadia Nadella, disclosed that roughly 20 to 20 to 30% of the company's codebase right now is generated by AI, marking a significant uptake. And I think what a lot of people were expecting Microsoft to say. So Nadella shared this during a conversation with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Meta's LamaCon conference, indicating mixed success with AI generated code depending on programming language,

as an example, with stronger results in Python and weaker in C++. Microsoft's CTO Kevin Scott has projected that by 2030, AI could be responsible for writing 95% of all code, suggesting a major transformation in how software will be created in the near future. So when asked Zuckerberg admitted, meta does not have a clear figure on how much of their company's code is AI generated, showing that AI adoption levels vary widely even among tech giants. Speaking of tech giants, Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently stated that over 30% of Google's code is AI generated, but the exact methods used to measure AI involvement in code.

voting remain unclear. All right. Our next piece of AI news, Apple may soon integrate Google Gemini and other AI models into Apple intelligence by the end of this year. So according to reports, Apple plans to incorporate Google's Gemini AI service into its Apple intelligence platforms by the end of 2025, signaling a significant move towards integrating third-party AI models. So right now, Apple does kind of have an exclusive relationship, so they have their own, you know, edge AI models. Apple does, but, you know, for the most part, they really rely on open AI's models to power more complex queries, but that could change. This development was confirmed through statements by Apple senior VP, Craig Federigi and Google CEO Sundar Pichai during a Department of Justice hearing.

Apple previously indicated in June of last year that they planned to allow you, users to choose from multiple AI models, including Google Gemini, to enhance the quality and accuracy of responses. Pachai confirmed discussions with Apple CEO Tim Cook about AI development in the future, distribution of Gemini and other AI apps through Apple Intelligence. Apple Intelligence is expected to use its own AI to evaluate and select the best third-party AI model for each user query, suggesting a more dynamic and competitive AI ecosystem within an Apple's platform.

Live stream audience, does anyone actually use Apple intelligence? I, you know, it wasn't the reason I got a new phone. I kind of needed a new phone anyways, I guess. But it was something I was looking forward to. And I'm like, this Apple intelligence, it doesn't work. Like, it's not intelligent at all. There's no smarter Siri. It can't, you know, add to intuitive.

It's terrible. So, but I don't think that has much to do with what model you choose under the hood. but regardless, the new news is you should be able to get, you know, Google Gemini, maybe by years end in Apple intelligence. All right. Last but not least, shares of AI and cloud computing companies jumped significantly on Wednesday. So yesterday after Meta and Microsoft reported their quarterly earnings that exceeded Wall Street's expectations, signaling confidence in the AI sector's growth potential. So Microsoft's stock soared over 6% driven primarily by robust growth in its Azure cloud computing business, which reassured investors that the company's substantial investments in AI are beginning to pay off.

Meta platform saw its share rise by more than 4% as AI powered tools helped boost advertising revenue despite ongoing economic uncertainties related to tariffs. So yeah, a good good day for AI power tools. companies as all their prices kind of shot up. So more on those stories and a lot more in our newsletter, Your EverydayAI.com. All right. Let's talk about it.

Should you be forced to use AI? Right? If you want to bring in new resources to a project or maybe hire some contractors or grow your team, should you have to show why AI can't do the job first? I don't know why. But this has been somewhat controversial over the last few, you know, week and a half, two weeks with some kind of viral announcements from the Shopify CEO first. And then after that, you know, we recently got some news from Duo Lingo as well.

And I don't know. part of me doesn't understand why this is such a big deal. Yet the business world and AI communities have been rattling ever since, right? Ever since these announcements, which we're going to dive into from both Shopify and Duo Lingo. Okay. But I think this is the new norm. I know this isn't a hot take Tuesday episode. But I would say this.

If your company, if your department, if your organization isn't already thinking about a similar stance to what we saw from Shopify and from duolingo, I think you should like I think you're you're in trouble. Right. And kind of how I started off the show. I think if your company by the end of 2025, if you don't have as many or more AIs as humans, you're in trouble. Your company is in trouble. So what do I mean by that as many AIs or AI seats as humans?

Okay. Number one, let's say you're a Microsoft, you know, your PC organization, right? everyone should have Microsoft 365 co-pilot, period. All right. If you are a Google workspace organization, everyone needs to have the, you know, I think it's called Google One now,

but everyone needs to have that premium, you know, $20, $30 a month per seat, Google Gemini. Right? Probably on top of that, even if you do have Microsoft 365 copilot, or even if you do have the Google Workspace, their premium version, on top of that, each employee should probably have a chat GPT license, right, on a team or an enterprise plan.

And even on top of that, I would argue a good amount of your organization, maybe not every single person right now, but every single person should also have a specialized seat or a specialized AI tool, depending on what type of work they're doing, right? So your software engineers, they need to have, you know, cursor or Replit or WinSurf, right? You know, your marketing teams, you know, they need access to, you know, some of these other platforms. You know, like I know one popular one for advertisers that's kind of taken off recently is Icon, right? Every single person should have at least two, maybe more seats or AI,

AIs that they should be using. And I haven't even gotten into, you know, as an example, Microsoft's co-pilot studio with their autonomous agents. The number of AI, you know, AIs need to outnumber the number of humans. Which is why for me personally, right, we saw this news from from Spotify and Duolingo. Like I said, a lot of people were shocked. I was like, this is just standard of business.

This needs to be said. But let's let's dive in a little bit into what actually was said. So what actually happened, all right? And hey, hey, live stream audience. Good to see everyone. Jackie, thanks for invite me out. You know, Jackie here from DePaul invited me out to kind of do a do a co-keynote. with Logan Kilpatrick from Google.

That was a great time. So thanks for that. Live stream audience. Good to see y'all. Fred, Angie, Marie, Rolando, all the YouTube crew. But let me know. Let me know. Are you taken aback by what happened with Shopify and Duolingo?

But here's actually what happened. So on April 7th, the Shopify CEO, some people said it was a leak, right? You know, it looks like some internal employees first posted it online. and then the Shopify CEO just went ahead and just released it and said, hey, here's what I said to my team. But he put a memo out that made AI proof mandatory before hiring. We're essentially saying before you go hire more humans, before you request more resources,

you need to justify how an AI could not do this. Sounds maybe cruel, right? but I think it's smart. I think it's just sound business decision, right? Let's say you are trying to kick off a new project in your department. You work at an enterprise company. And, you know, maybe you're like, okay, we need to hire, you know, two new full-time people for this and, you know, an agency and three contractors. If I was in charge, I would be like, why can't AI do it?

Right? Like, why can't AI do it? And I think that the average business leader, you need to shift your mindset, right? I don't think this should always be a top down initiative, right? Where a CEO has to come in and say, hey, you can't hire a human until you can prove an AI can't do that. I think, you know, the average, the average, you know, business leader needs to have that mentality. You need to constantly be going through these steps on your own first, right? And I don't know, if I was running a large organization and someone came to me, it would be the expectation that someone first has tried an AI.

Right. So even at my, you know, very, very small organization, even before, you know, three or four years ago, before chat, GPT, we literally, like when we onboarded new people, we had this like how you learn document. Right. So it's like, okay, number one, you know, you go like, let's say if you're trying to learn a new website or, you know, something new in the industry or new, new piece of software, right? So it's like, oh, don't, don't come and ask me first, right? Number one, go to the website, read it. Number two, watch a quick YouTube tutorial. Number three, ask AI, right? We had, you know, different, uh, you know, AI tools before chat, GBT came out.

But even for us before chat GPT, that was always part of the learning plan is you need to take advantage of these amazing resources that we all have available to us. So that was April 7th, the Shopify CEOs. memo that kind of kicked off this kind of, you know, hot debate online where people are like, yo, this is, this is cruel. And, you know, and then the other people are like, this is common sense. So a couple of days ago, so that was earlier this week, Duolingo had kind of a similar announcement, where they said they are shifting to full AI first operations. And then just yesterday, Duolingo kind of followed that up pretty quickly.

And they just released 148 AI built courses that were launched, proving that, yeah, they kind of met what they were like what they said. So if you don't know, Duolingo, it is a, you know, a software or an app that helps people easily learn other languages. So, you know, they had this announcement on a Monday. And then by Wednesday, they released almost 150 AI built courses. So I liked that for Duolingo. It wasn't just talk. All right. Douglas here saying, you know, my CEO and I were talking about this approach recently,

looking forward to this conversation. Yes, if your leadership is already not having this conversation, you need to, right? And I want to get my full thoughts on the record before I go into more details for today's show. I've said all along, literally all along, AI is going to quote unquote, take more jobs than it will create, right? That's not me being a pessimist. That's me being a realist, right? Everyone wants to, you know, have this utopian view of artificial intelligence and the future of work. That's not how it goes.

Sorry. So AI will be extremely disruptive and a bad way for a lot of people. And I think it will take the workforce way longer to adapt. But I think overall there's going to be way fewer full-time. I would say easily millions, probably tens of millions, maybe even more of traditional full-time roles that will not exist. Yes, there will be other roles that are created that are AI. native, AI-centric, AI-first roles that do not exist today. But I do think there will probably be tens of millions.

Yeah, I know that's a huge number. I think ultimately, you know, whether that's three, five, ten years down the line, there will be tens of millions fewer full-time positions than there are today. And that is because of these similar shifts that these companies are making. So you might be thinking, okay, Jordan, that's very, anti-human pro-AI of you, but no, that's business, right? Period. Because if you aren't having these exact conversations, your competitors are, right? Whether we all want to admit it or not, AI is smarter than us all. AI is faster than us all, right? And people are always like, oh,

okay, AI hallucinates. All right. If I give you a test of, you know, five, 500 questions and expect you to spit them out, you know, immediately, even around your domain expertise. Are you going to get all 500 correct? Absolutely not. Even the smartest humans in their line of expertise are not hallucination free, right? And as these models become more capable, we get these, you know, these reasoning models that can think, plan, these hybrid models, these models that have these agenetic capabilities by default. We have to be using it like business leaders. You have to be forcing AI first AI native.

And I probably wouldn't be hiring, right? Even if I'm an organization that normally, you know, hires, let's just say 100 new employees every cycle. I don't know. I would probably only be hiring a fraction of that. I'm being honest. That's not me being anti-human. That's me actually being pro-human.

Because if you're not making those decisions, your competitors are, and they're going to come gobble your lunch money. They're not going to gobble your lunch money. They're going to take your lunch money or gobble your lunch, right? So if you're not doing this, if you're not having this AI native AI first approach, that seems very kind of cruel on the surface. If you're not doing it, it is actually more cruel ultimately to your human employees

if you're not taking this approach. That's the reality, y'all. Okay. So why are firms people? pivoting right now. So why is this AI native AI first, you know, all of a sudden out of nowhere, all the buzz, well, uh, Duolingo as an example, needed scalable content in AI slash their course production time dramatically. On the Shopify side, if you don't know Shopify, uh, they're one of the largest, uh, e commerce platforms in the world. And if you buy anything online, that's not from

Amazon, there's a good chance that it's probably a Shopify store. So shop, uh, Shopify's CEO, called AI the biggest productivity shift of his career. And right now, a survey showed that 91% of global executives are already scaling their AI initiatives. Even though, right, there's all these contradicting pieces of reporting out there, right? Because you see these pieces of reporting that say, oh, okay, you know, less than 5% of, you know, organizations have implemented AI company-wide. Yet you see these other ones that are saying 91% of global executives are scaling their

AI initiatives. Both of those things can be true. Companies can both be terrible at implementing AI top to bottom, yet they can still find great success and scale those successes that are maybe on a smaller scale. We have to pay attention, y'all. The rulebook is changing. So I want to talk a little bit more about what Duo Lingo is doing. And then we're going to talk a little bit more about what Shopify. So for Duo Lingo, let me just make sure I have all my slides here for notes, for reminders. Okay, so for Duo Lingo teams hire only after proving tasks cannot be automated. Is that cruel or smart?

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workflows for common creative tasks like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations. Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at firefly.adoply.com. I don't know. To me, seem smart. Contractors are phased out wherever AI reaches acceptable educational benchmarks. Yeah. That makes sense.

And let me also be very honest. My, you know, I also, so I have everyday AI, you know, that's one of my companies. I also have another company that's, I kind of intentionally decided to phase out. It's called Accelerate Agency. I've told the story once or twice before, but. You know, when I saw AI in, you know, large language models and generative AI get so much more powerful. I said, you know, and this was even after one of our best months, you know, in the six or seven years of the company, I said, I got to start shutting this thing down, right? Because now there's AI that does this better, right? I could have scaled with AI and shifted the business model.

I didn't want to necessarily play a quality or sorry, a quantity game, you know, because I, I understood the technology and I said, hey, I'd rather spend as much time as I can learning and helping others, you know, keep up with this AI. But, you know, on the Duolingo side, contractors are essentially phased out. So kind of what I did with my one of my businesses. I'm like, okay, AI just does this better. We should face this out. Same thing there with Duolingo. And the CEO accepts small quality dips to gain implementation speed.

That's true as well because right now, AI is the worst it will ever be. Do AI systems make mistakes? Yes. Do AI systems hallucinate? Absolutely. So do humans. I don't understand why. We as a society have an unrealistic expectation of artificial intelligence that is far beyond the expectation that we have of senior leadership, right? How many times does you're, I don't know, I'm just going to throw a word out. How many times is your marketing director making mistakes, right? probably a lot, especially with how quickly marketing is changing. How many times do they get something wrong? Probably a lot.

Right. I would go ahead and go out on a very sturdy branch and say, if we were measuring human hallucination rates, like, they'd be the worst AI out there, right? Us humans, we are not nearly as smart as the most capable large language models, even not as some of the ones in the middle of the road. It's not even close. So Shopify's. So Shopify's kind of quote unquote leaked but then released announcement is really, I think,

what set this off. And I think a lot of companies are going to follow suit. Let me put that out there now. I think this has already been going on at, you know, hundreds of large enterprise companies in the U.S., you know, and maybe they just weren't very vocal about it. Maybe they did not send out that, you know, all employee memo. But I think it's been going on for multiple quarters. So Shopify, essentially, their team.

teams now document AI attempts before requesting staff or extra resources. AI proficiency is added as a baseline criteria for performance valuations. That's smart. And their memo noted that some employees are achieving up to 10-fold productivity gains. Again, if you do this the right way, if you become an AI native and AI-first organization and get a 10-fold of productivity, I think you. you can accept the fact that, you know, oh, this AI system might hallucinate, right? Or it might throw way too many m-dashes and delves in the copy, but us humans can go change that.

Right. And obviously, there's been a lot of debate on this. And there's been a little bit of backlash. But if I'm being honest, I do think that backlash will fade, right? But some reports, you know, as an example, an article in text, crunch that we shared when this was announced, highlighted that there was a lot of backlash for Duolingo after this kind of contractor replacement plan. The news.com site in Australia labeled Shopify's rule as quote unquote shameful stoking some workforce anxiety. And there were a lot of

threads on Reddits of people voicing their fears about entry level opportunities evaporating because of these type of announcements or rules, right? Because generally what this does, if you look at the types of roles that today's AI systems are, you know, making moot more or less, it is a lot of times those, you know, introductory roles, maybe some researching roles, maybe some content type roles, maybe some marketing roles. Software development is another big one, you know, customer service, right? So, you know, a lot of people are seeing this right now, at least as more entry level roles. So it is getting harder and harder for recent graduates to find jobs, right? Yeah, quiet layoffs.

Monica saying, you know, this is so true. Humans make mistakes all the time. We all do. Yeah. Absolutely. And as Jackie's saying, even humans have bias. Yeah, people are like, oh, you know, this AI has bias, right? Okay. So do humans, right? All AI is, it's a reflection of humanity or at least what humanity has made available on the internet. All right.

Arvin here from YouTube says, he's riding the AI train here. Companies can either board or be left behind. while competitors board. All right. Marie is saying, it's happened to me already. Some of my e-learning clients have switched to AI. E-learning was 30% of her income.

Yeah. It's already been happening, right? I just think these companies, right, Duolingo and Shopify are huge companies, right? They're not small. So for companies of this size to come out, excuse me, this hard on,

hey, we are AI first, AI native. And we're essentially going to stop hiring humans to do these certain jobs because we feel that AI can do them better. That's a big, like a big stance. And I think like, like we are talking about here, there was a lot of public backlash and debate. And that's because workers, I would say, especially in the U.S., where there's very little regulation.

And a lot of times Wall Street rewards. public companies that cut jobs and invest in AI, right? So that means workers are more nervous than ever about their employment. Right. So a recent Pew survey said that 32% of workers expect AI to cut jobs. Hey, other 68%? Sorry, you're wrong. That's the whole point of AI. Right. Again, I'm not going to come in here with this, you know, drinking some, you know, utopian AI Kool-Aid where we all just, you know, have better and more meaningful lives and two-hour work weeks. Like, okay, will that be a reality for some?

Yes. But the other harsh reality is we all have to pivot every single one of us. You have to have to have. kind of a plan, right? We talked about this in our show yesterday, which I'm going to mention here at the end. But you have to right now, you have to be thinking what happens if my company makes a similar move as Shopify or do a lingo? Because I think if we're having this same conversation next year, that's the norm, right?

Especially if you are in an internet company, if you're a remote company, if you're a remote company, If you're a software company, right, it's different if you have physical offices where you're interfacing with clients or customers. I think it's a little different. But essentially for companies that live in the cloud, this is going to be the norm next year, right? Period. You know, especially if you work in software, if you work at, you know, a company that is similar to, you know, Shopify, similar to duolingo, you know, apps, software, anything like

that where AI is coming in and completely transforming those sectors maybe first, you know, high price sectors, consulting, legal accounting. You have to have. It's understandable if you have this kind of AI anxiety. But also it is my expectation. If you are listening to this, number one, you're ahead of your peers. Okay. Because you're tuning in.

You're trying to learn. trying to better yourself, you're trying to, uh, you know, either ride this AI wave or make sense of it at least. So you're ahead of your peers, but you need to have that what happens if or maybe what happens when? What happens when my team gets smaller? What happens when or maybe you're the CEO of a large organization? What happens when you get that feeling in your gut? Oh my gosh, I have to stop hiring as many people because my competitors have gone AI native. Right. people think that, you know, hiring fewer humans or firing humans is very anti-human. But like I said earlier, I would make the argument, it actually might be in the best interest

of the humans that you have to reduce your headcount for those humans that you still, you know, have on board. So 52% report feeling more worried than hopeful about workplace AI. And a study also finds that executives are dissatisfied with AI tools despite heavy adoption. So what does that mean? What does that mean? Big organizations, enterprise companies, want to hire fewer humans. They want to use AI, but they're somewhat dissatisfied with the current AI tools. Huh.

If only we could put two and two together, what does that mean? Oh, wait. You, listener, you can help solve that problem, right? your organization wants to scale with AI, but its leaders aren't happy with, you know, the current implementation and the current tools. Okay. Find your niche right there. You're listening.

You're ahead of your peers. Be the one. I know, you know, people get tired of talking about, you know, AI steering committees and, and all these things. You need to be on those. You need to be the one that is learning and training, you know, internal teams. If you're listening to this, you can. be the one that, you know, can be the glue for your organization and that creates job security.

All right. There's also, it's not as easy as it sounds, right? Because some states are actually making this whole hiring and AI thing a little tricky, right? So New York, specifically, New York City, they have their local law 124, I believe, or sorry, 144. around its automated employment decision tools, right, or AEDT. Essentially, that's hiring AI, right? So it's pretty interesting. We've talked about on the show over the last year and a half,

but this law requires employers to run an independent bias audit every 12 months on any automated employment decision tool before it screens applicants. Companies must give New York City candidates 10 days advance that an AI tool will be used and post the audit summary online for public review. The U.S. still lacks a single federal statute on AI hiring, leaving companies to navigate a fast-growing patchwork of state and local rules instead. So there's two sides to this coin, right? One is companies are deciding to hire AIs instead of human. And the other thing is companies are now just relying and maybe overly relying on AI tools to even hire humans, right? I had a good conversation with this with some

students last night, you know, after this event at DePaul University here in Chicago that I spoke at. And, you know, they're all like, hey, you know, what, you know, what AI tool can I go and, you know, use to apply for a thousand jobs a day, right? And I think that's where everyone's at right now, because everyone's like, I can't find jobs, right? Companies aren't hiring. Maybe the same as they were, you know, three years ago, four years ago, or, you know, pre-pandemic, you know, the combination between hybrid work and AI tools. And now the kind of tightening of the belt with this new hiring norm, this AI playbook, it's creating a lot of anxiety, right? So even hiring practices and applying practices for maybe this lower number of jobs is changing. So here's my hot take.

Ready? I know it's Thursday. But you have to adapt or fade. Period. There's no option. Right? I will say this. There's always exceptions to any rule.

But as someone that's lucky enough to talk to the smartest people in the world on AI, A lot of those conversations you all hear, I obviously have a lot of conversations that don't end up on the podcast, right? There's always exceptions to the rule. Let me say that. Will there be some companies that buck this AI first, AI native trend and grow their human headcount? Absolutely. But I will say for the overwhelming majority of companies, especially in the U.S., you need to learn from what Shopify is doing. you need to learn from what dual lingo is doing, as crude as that may sound.

Even if it hits you in the gut as, ah, this doesn't really feel right. I think the overwhelming majority of companies need to take that AI native approach. You need to look at your team. You need to say, where do we have redundancies? I'm not saying you need to fire people, right? You can shift them over. And, you know, what I do, actually, when I do keynote speeches, I literally lay this out. I'm like, don't hire or, you know, don't fire 70% or 50%. Here's what you need to do.

So you need to have a plan and I think there is a plan to do that. But you need to, if you're a business leader right now, if you're leading your organization, you need to be having those conversations as tough as they sound. Hey, do we need to hire a person for this role? Do we need 20 people in customer service, right? Or should we scale our AI efforts in there? and, you know, cut that team in half or maybe as people leave or retire, we just don't refill those positions. Maybe we take half of them and we spend them up and we put them on a data collection or an AI team, right? So again, I'm not saying you need to reduce your overall human headcount, but you need to see where AI is better. And you need to come to that realization,

okay, maybe we don't need to hire these 100 people this year. Maybe we need to hire 20. All right, or maybe this huge department, maybe we've been doing it all wrong. And maybe this department needs to be much smaller. And we need to find other, other roles for some of these people that now AI is just way better at their job than that. Yeah, there's quiet layoffs going on 100%. McDonald here says it's a smart move. AI first, AI native. People are getting this wrong.

So I hate, and you've heard me say this before. I absolutely hate the words upskill and reskill. If you're still pushing those words in your organization, when it comes to AI, it's bad news. It's bad news. We need to unlearn, okay? Yeah, I should coin that term, right? I should go, I don't know, write a book on unlearning or something

because it's hard to do, but that's what you need to do. You can't become AI Native, AI first organization, by, you know, trying to sprinkle some AI in the middle of a process or at the end, right? Or just maybe, oh, let's just start this process with AI. That means AI first, right? And then we do everything else the same. No, you need to unlearn. You need to adapt or you will fade.

Your company will fade because this hiring model that we've been going through soon just becomes, you know, this new hiring model of the, you know, AI first, AI native. That's going to become the baseline. This duolingo Shopify, although it's grabbing all the headlines and attention now, this is normal business practice because those competitive gaps are going to widen very sharply in the next nine to 18 months between those that have gone true AI native AI first and those that are still just, you know, we we use AI here and there where it makes sense. Because operating AI first now means you are actually. actually competing. Whereas if you're not, you're signing up to fade away. All right. So here's what you need to do. You need to map your workflows. You need to flag tasks that mature AI can safely automate today. And when I say mature AI, you need to be using the best and the brightest, right?

You need to be using these models that can reason, these models that can think and plan, these hybrid models. You need to be using agenic AI. It's not as tricky as it sounds. And you need to, I will say, instead of upskilling every employee, you need to unlearn and relearn every single employee on core generative AI tools using these different systems. And you need to bake AI proof of attempt into hiring budget and performance templates, right? You need to be measuring how much each and every employee is using AI and their productivity gains because you need to be reevaluating how you do work. So is it harsh to say use AI or you're fired?

Is it wrong for companies to hire fewer humans and to use more AI? I don't think so. I think it's the only way forward. If you're a business leader, if your business owner, if you are a decision maker, it seems counterintuitive. It might hit you in the. gut and be like, this seems wrong, right? But if you care about the longevity of your organization, you have to do it. You need more AIs than humans. Number one, that means you need to equip

your current humans with AI. You need to emphasize AI literacy and training. You need to give them tools, but every single employee should have at least, I would say, two to three different AIs, right? So whether that's a chat, GPT enterprise license, Microsoft 365, co-pire. pilot, Google's Gemini across the workspace, you know, or those kind of domain or department-specific AIs. All of your employees need them. You need more AIs than humans. That's step one.

You need literacy, education, and training. So people need access. They need training. And then you need to rethink. You need to rethink the business playbook of the last, you know, 20 to 3,000. 30 years and kind of learn from exactly what duolingo in Shopify are doing because that's the new norm. That's how business works now. All right. I hope this was helpful, y'all. If this sounds up your alley, yesterday's episode was actually great and kind of related when we talked about job

security is dead in the age of AI in what you should do instead. So if you're listening on the podcast, make sure to go check out yesterday's episode. That's episode 515. Also, if you haven't already, maybe I'll do like a mid-year update on these as I sometimes do. Go back and listen to our 2025 AI predictions and roadmap series. I talked about some of these issues in length. It is a five-part series, very fast, right? So not these normal, you know, 40 to 50-minute podcast that today's turned into. Right.

So go listen to episodes 443 to 447, the five-part series. They're 25 minutes each, very quick. We talk about that as well. plenty of education on our website at your everyday a.I.com. If this was helpful, tell someone about it. Click that repost. Also, if you're listening on the podcast, I'd appreciate it. Spotify changed their little algorithm recently. So fewer and fewer people are actually now discovering us on Spotify. So if this is, you know, if the podcast has been helpful for you, we would really appreciate it. If you click that follow button there on Spotify and Apple, as well as,

going and leaving us a rating. All right. We'd really appreciate that. That would help more people like you learn and, you know, go through a lot of these uneasy feelings that AI can cause if you would do that on the podcast. So we'd really appreciate that. So thank you for tuning in. Make sure to go to your everyday AI.com.

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