I preach “AI is an amplifier, not a replacer.” True—for individuals. But inside companies, that advice is kindergarten. View this email in your browser

The Weekly AI Briefing

🧑‍🏫 Latest AI thoughts, tools, and news from unburdn One more Sora video (I’m still obsessed- one Sora invite code left if you want it) 🔗 My week in NYC (Anita Gelato overload!) Housekeeping: 🗓️ Booked until Dec 1. Just a few openings left before Jan 2026.

Main Idea:

AI isn’t software. It’s a culture change program. I preach “AI is an amplifier, not a replacer.” True—for individuals. But inside companies, that advice is kindergarten. Rolling out AI like another SaaS tool is why most corporate “AI programs” quietly die in a SharePoint folder. Buying licenses, clearing security, and doing a few tool demos is the easy part. The hard part—the part that actually moves revenue, cost, and risk—is culture: shared intent, shared behaviors, and shared incentives. The Mistake You’re Making: Treating AI like Notion or an ERP. AI is conceptual horsepower. Without clarity on why and how your people should use it, adoption stalls, output quality is inconsistent, and everyone wonders if the real plan is headcount reduction. Think electrification of factories, not swapping steam engines. Electricity didn’t pay off until leaders re-laid floors, rewired workflows, and retrained teams.

Consider this:

-If your “AI strategy” fits inside the IT budget line item, you don’t have one. -If managers can’t answer “What are we using this for?” in one sentence, your teams will invent their own (usually “don’t get fired”) -or- they just won’t do it. PS: Keep reading for hot-takes on headlines, AI tools, and a personal story + pic

📰 AI News Worth Knowing

💰 Goldman: The AI boom isn’t a bubble—just the opening act. Productivity gains are showing up, and long-run ROI can justify today’s infra spend. But beware: first movers in heavy infrastructure often underperform—late entrants can buy assets cheap after overbuilds. Read Here 📉 BCG: Only 5% of companies are getting real AI value. The winners treat AI as a multi-year operating-model shift: they reshape workflows, build data foundations, upskill talent, and rigorously track value. If you treat AI like “another app,” you’ll join the 95%. Read Here 🛡️ TIME: AI browsers = new attack surface. Perplexity’s Comet had a flaw where malicious links could hijack the assistant to exfiltrate data from connected services. Lesson: autonomy boosts productivity—and risk. Read Here 🧾 Deloitte’s AI faceplant = tuition payment. Deloitte Australia is refunding part of a ~$290k report after fake citations and a fabricated court quote were found. No, they didn’t “just use ChatGPT,” but they did skip basic face checking. Read Here ⚡ WSJ: Data centers are bringing their own power. Demand from AI is outpacing the grid; U.S. should add ~80 GW/year but is building <65 GW. Gap ≈ power for two Manhattans at summer peak. Read Here

🛠️ AI Tools You Need to Try

🗂️ NotebookLM — Your team’s “second brain” for docs. They keep rolling out new features. Go MAFO with it! How to use it: Ingest a training video, SOWs, or policy PDFs and spin up Q&A, summaries, and templates. I used it to turn a long training into a working playbook—fast. NotebookLM 🎬 Sora 2 — Video generation playground. (LAST CALL!) How to use it: MAFO! Sora 2 🧰 Unburdn’s Vault. A curated library of AI tools mapped to Crawl → Walk → Run stages. Great cheat‑sheet for leveling up your team’s stack. Explore Here.

📢 Take Action

If you’re treating AI like software, you’re leaving money on the factory floor. Book us with a “Reply” or go here[Subscribe

From the Field: 🚕 Sprinting Uptown

Blurry picture of me running between meetings—in a taxi. Incredible week in NYC (one of my favorite cities). I’m there ~1 week per month, and Wednesday I was booked solid from 7:30 a.m. to just after 8 p.m., running between four different venues. Grabbed this blurry selfie headed uptown to a client social. I’ve been thinking back on this last year—what this is becoming—and I’m grateful for our clients (if you’re reading this, THANK YOU) and a team working their butts off to help scale this beyond anything I imagined. The business lesson: momentum compounds when culture is aligned—this is a sprint marathon. No chill. So much AI to slang!! Thanks for reading. 🙏 Copyright (C) 2025 AI for the Rest of Us LLC dba Unburdn. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe