The power and the care

The dual experience of AI acceleration: excitement and terror, said in that order. Top builders 3-5x more productive, median only 10-20%. The gap widens. Amazon outages show what happens when power outpaces care. Skill requirements dropping in AI-exposed jobs. The organisations that will matter are those building in care alongside speed. What happened this week: * Shopify CEO ran AI optimisation against 20-year-old Liquid engine: 53% faster parse/render, 61% fewer allocations. Legacy code isn't too embedded to improve, it's too embedded not to try * BCG/UC Riverside research (1,488 workers): AI productivity peaks at 3 tools then collapses. 'AI brain fry' causes 33% more decision fatigue, 39% more major mistakes. High performers hit first * ATMs didn't kill bank tellers, the iPhone did. Automating tasks within current structure creates adjacent roles. Redesigning the structure from scratch eliminates them (David Oks, a16z) What to try: * Simulate the toughest reader: create AI versions of board members from known priorities and past questions, run every document past them before a human sees it * Delete the headline, ask AI what it should be: if the model's headline differs from what the colleague wrote, it reveals a disconnect between message and evidence * Fix the instructions, not just the output: update custom instructions, project briefs, context files after every miss. Output matters today, instructions compound forever Read the full edition with all links and sources: https://steadman.ai/newsletters/david/#edition-2026-03-14