AI Is a Tool, We Still Need Humans to Think and Imagine

Someone asked me if AI, if it was around in the 1990's, could have advised Sears to take on Amazon.

I replied that Sears should not have had to "take on" Amazon.  They should have been Amazon.  

They were Amazon in the late 19th / early centuries.  They took advantage of the high tech at the time (railroads) to deliver their catalogs and products all over America.  They let people in small towns shop remotely and have a much greater choice.

But, in the 80s/80s, they got distracted by trying to play in finance and insurance, and they lacked a visionary/critical thinker who could see the analogy between the internet and the railroad.

An AI would not have caught this.  That is why humans need to be the leaders.  Human's strengths (critical thinking, imagination, and communication/story telling) will be ever more important.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

How to Delay Projects

As a manager, If you want to delay your projects and reduce throughput, make sure that each of your employees is at "maximum utilization", and loaded with work.

The counter-intuitive fact is, if you want to maximize output, you shouldn't load people more than 75%.

The truth is that project execution is like driving on a highway. If the highway is filled to capacity, you have traffic jams. At 75% capacity, cars have the bandwidth to maneuver around stalled cars, sudden braking, etc.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

My Analysis of Zuckerberg's "Personal Superintelligent" AI Manifesto

Zuckerberg is ambitious and follows Andy Grove's idea of "only the paranoid survive" and wants to stay ahead of disruption.  AI models are in danger of becoming commodities—users can build their applications and, through the cloud, easily switch between models.

So, to differentiate, he is leveraging the fact that Facebook is minting money (they exceeded this quarter by a lot), by throwing it at the best researchers, and is promoting this idea of "personalized super intelligence."

All the AI players are starting to think about the model being a commodity, and so Meta is not the only one trying to escape from being behind a phone or PC.  While Meta is talking about AI glasses, OpenAI made the big teaser announcement that they partnered with Jony Ives (the famous Apple designer) to create their own wearable AI device (rumored to be a pendant).

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Zuckerberg's Manifesto

If you've been following AI news, Meta has been putting together a "AI super intelligence" team, and they have been hiring away the best scientists from Open AI, Google, etc. for professional athlete money ($100+ million).

Today, Zuckerberg released his manifesto (https://www.meta.com/superintelligence/).

The highlights are:

1. They have seen AI start to improve itself in the last few months, so developing super intelligence is within sight.

2. The rest of this decade will likely be decisive for determining the path forward.

3. He believes the other companies subscribe to the model of a central AI super intelligence taking all jobs and people living on the dole of it's output.

4. Meta's vision is personalized super intelligence in everyone's hands, for people to achieve their visions.

5. He feels our primary computing devices will be something like glasses that see and hear everything we do, and interact with us during the day.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Project Management

Stages of any long term project: 

1. I have plenty of time. 

2. Oh sh*t.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Are App Stores Shopping Malls or Liquor Stores?

I read about this analogy in Fortune magazine.  It concerns possible age verification legislation.  

If, for example, Meta's Snap gets restricted by law from children under 13, who is responsible for checking IDs?

The App stores (Apple, Google) say that they are like a mall, and Snap would be like a liquor store in their mall, and is responsible,    Meta says that the App stores are the liquor stores, and apps are simply a variety of alcohol.  It's the liquor store's responsibility to check IDs.

It's just another example of how the digital world has become such an integral part of life that tech discussions are now around more than just software or technology.  They also revolve around society and the law.

© 2025 Praveen Puri

Can You Give Me An Example?

Famed consultant Edgar Schein talked about avoiding misunderstandings in business discussions by "going down the abstraction layer."  He said the best way to do this is to ask "Can you give me an example?"

#strategy

#businesscommunication

#communication

© 2025 Praveen Puri