The hundred small things

AI value sits not in dramatic one-off wins but in a hundred small daily elevations (better meeting prep, cleaner drafts, faster document scanning) that compound into transformation. Firms can't see it because they track big projects, not distributed micro-gains. The Japanese senryu poetry cancellation illustrates the risk: AI alone produces sameness, AI plus human steering produces something better. What happened this week: * Citrini Research fiction set in 2028: when AI makes expertise cheap, clients stop buying it. 'A lot of what people called relationships was simply friction with a friendly face' * Block cut from 10,000 to under 6,000 people while growing gross profit 24%. Y Combinator founders planning to eliminate all engineers below senior level. Market valued each eliminated Block role at... * Google Gemini 3.1 Pro scored 77.1% on ARC-AGI-2 (double predecessor in 3 months). Model choice matters less; application layer and workflow matter more What to try: * Run your day through AI at 6pm: daily five-paragraph reflection from meeting notes, voice recordings, emails. Pattern recognition compounds over weeks * Before building training, check the settings menu: ask five people which model they use and whether they've changed settings. Answers reveal maturity better than any survey * Push record, think aloud, send to AI: skip the blank page for case studies, knowledge sharing, personal reflection Read the full edition with all links and sources: https://steadman.ai/newsletters/david/#edition-2026-02-28