How to Stay Valuable in the Age of AI: Packy McCormick on Why the Most Human Wins

AI can now produce text, images, analysis and software at low cost. That weakens the value of work built around repeatable processes, standard templates and easily replicated outputs. In his latest Not Boring essay Packy McCormick argues that people will remain valuable by developing qualities that are harder to automate: judgement, originality, humour, emotional intelligence, physical experience and a distinct point of view.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How to stay relevant in an AI-driven economy

• Why prompt engineering is unlikely to provide a lasting advantage

• Which jobs and tasks are most exposed to AI automation

• Why abstraction and first-principles thinking are becoming more important

• How originality and specificity create value when generic output is abundant

• Why founders should think more like comedians than consultants

• What emotional intelligence and embodied experience contribute to work

• How to raise children in a world of unlimited AI-generated content

• How people can evaluate truth when synthetic media becomes commonplace

• Why being recognisably human may become an economic advantage

The argument isn’t that humans can compete with AI by producing more work or completing it faster. It’s that value shifts when competent output becomes widely available.

This conversation examines what people, founders and creators can offer when execution is cheap, templates are everywhere and machines can reproduce the average.

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SHOW LINKS:

Download the Not Boring strategy guide - https://www.notboring.co/ Join your people: www.thinkingonpaper.xyz

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkingonpaperpodcast/

Watch On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPEusidDNO4&t=645s&ab_channel=ThinkingOnPaper

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Timestamps

(00:00) Disruptors And Curious Minds

(00:43) Not Boring Newsletter

(02:00) Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs?

(03:07) Commoditization Of Human Skills

(05:12) The Ingredients Of Outputs Are Changing

(07:39) Abstraction: Aim Higher

(09:29) Be A Business, Man

(10:24) Advice For Parents

(11:00) AI Collateral Damage

(12:52) The Value Of Ideas

(13:54) Know Yourself

(14:38) Differentiation And Michael Porter's Competitive Strategy

(17:00) Will We Be More Human?

(18:10) Hot Buttons

(20:13) When Resources Are Scarce: Move Up The Stack

(21:22) Who Turned Off The Funny Button?

(23:10) How Do You Find Scarce?

(27:19) Creativity For Everyone

(29:15) I Hate Perfect

(32:55) The US V UK AI Comparison

(35:24) The Energy Cost--

#ai #notboring #packymccormick