Episode 113: Your Best AI Person Hasn't Told Anyone Yet

Erik Martinez and Pat Barry made their AI predictions six months ago. Agents, AI shopping, rising costs, governance. They were right about almost all of it, and almost none of it showed up the way they expected. Pat keeps running into the same pattern across every organization he works with. Someone has quietly built something remarkable with AI. When Pat tells them to share it, the answer is always some version of "yeah, they're not really into it." The capability exists. It's invisible. And nobody is asking why it stays that way. Meanwhile, Erik went from spending his days in Excel, PowerPoint, and Canva to doing ninety percent of his work inside tools that didn't exist in their current form six months ago. Pat's building entire training decks with agents that get him 85% of the way there in a quarter of the time. AI platforms are turning into the new office suite, and most people haven't realized the shift already happened. Token costs are climbing and Erik describes trying to track them as "absolutely maddening." One of Pat's healthcare clients made a governance decision that positioned them as what Pat calls "the team of the future." A university with 50,000 employees and access to the same tools can't keep up. The predictions were about what AI would do. What actually changed was how the humans work. That gap is the conversation in Episode 113.