Unburdn AI: 😳 Use AI or You're Fired? The Wall Street Journal just dropped a banger of a headline: “The Boss Has a Message: Use AI or You’re Fired.” View this email in your browser

The Weekly AI Briefing

🧑‍🏫 Latest AI thoughts, tools, and news from unburdn The Wall Street Journal just dropped a banger of a headline: “The Boss Has a Message: Use AI or You’re Fired.” Wall Street Journal Here’s my hot take: in most companies, that’s a sick joke. Because the same leaders threatening people over “AI proficiency”… also have no clear definition of what good AI use looks like in their own business. I spend my days inside great companies with very smart leaders. They’re experimenting, they’re moving, they’re curious. But when you pop the hood, almost everyone is still early. Lots of pilots. Lots of “we should really do more with this.” Very few truly rewired workflows. Which is totally fine. That’s what progress looks like. What’s not fine is pretending AI skills are a binary checkbox for performance reviews. Every company is different. Every role is different. And this technology is effectively brand new and changing weekly. AI is a foreign language. Training is like the first semester. Useful, but just the start. Real proficiency only comes when the entire org commits to practice, reps, and feedback over months—not a one-off workshop and a threat. Pro-tips: Stop bluffing: If you can’t define “what good AI looks like” for each key role, you’re not ready to judge anyone’s proficiency. Fix that first. Wait, then evaluate: After 3–6 months of real practice, then have an honest conversation about who’s leaning in, who’s stuck, and who needs a different seat. PS: Keep reading for hot-takes on headlines, AI tools, and a personal story + pic

📰 AI News Worth Knowing

🛰 AI is now a geopolitical arms race, not a Silicon Valley toy. The WSJ lays out how the U.S. and China are sprinting to win the “AI Cold War,” with national cloud build-outs, huge AGI bets, and chip battles that look a lot like the old arms race. The stakes are economic power, security, and who sets the rules for the next few decades. This is one reason the AI pendulum will swing hard—governments are not tapping the brakes. Wall Street Journal 🎧 The best “AI history + future” crash course you haven’t heard. I’m giving this one a second shout-out on purpose. The Last Invention is a podcast series that walks through how we got here with AI, why it matters, and where this might be going. It’s not academic snooze-fest; it’s genuinely gripping and hugely helpful context for any leader. YouTube 📊 McKinsey’s new AI report: efficiency is table stakes. McKinsey’s latest State of AI survey says roughly 80% of companies set “efficiency” as a goal for AI… but the ones actually seeing big value also aim for growth and innovation, not just cost-cutting. McKinsey & Company 🔐 Google’s “Private AI Compute” kills the ‘data privacy’ excuse. Google just announced Private AI Compute—letting you run powerful Gemini models in the cloud while keeping your data private, even from Google itself. This is exactly the direction enterprise AI is heading: strong capabilities and locked-down data. If “we can’t risk our data” is still your main blocker, that wall is rapidly disappearing. Google Blog

🛠️ AI Tools You Need to Try

📣 Pomelli (Google Labs) A new AI experiment from Google Labs + DeepMind that lets small and mid-sized businesses auto-generate on-brand social media campaigns. It analyzes your website, learns your brand, and spins up content ideas and assets you can tweak and publish—basically a tiny marketing team in a browser tab. Read more 🧰 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 want your team using AI well—not just pretending so they don’t get dinged on their review—you need structure, practice, and a clear definition of “good.” Book us with a “Reply” or go here[Subscribe

From the Field: 🦭 One-on-One Time and the XL Walrus

I love family time… but there’s something magic about 1:1 time with my kids. Fewer personalities in the room = more presence, more real conversations. Recently my son Vincent and I spent a few hours wandering the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. No agenda. Just us, some wild exhibits, and a truly ridiculous XL walrus with tusks that look like it crash-landed from another planet. We ended the day on the observation deck—just me, my son, Denver’s skyline, City Park, and the mountains in the distance. One of my favorite cities on the planet, and our home. 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