When I was a kid, my favorite comic strip was Garfield. And for those who remember “the comics” that came with the Sunday paper, stay with me. A recurring gag with Garfield was him constantly trying to send Odie or Nermal (the world’s cutest cat) to Abu Dhabi. So to me, Abu Dhabi seemed like the furthest place away that you could possibly send something – by mail.

I can’t help but notice that every business leader from here to Abu Dhabi is hyper focused on investing in Artificial Intelligence. I’m not suggesting that investing in AI is a bad thing, quite the contrary. But I do worry that business leaders can’t see the forest for the trees. Here’s what I mean. One of my most favorite-ist quotes is from former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III:

“I’m not going to take care of my career anymore. I’m going to take care of my people. And the moment I did that, everything changed because they wouldn’t let me fail.”

If you truly believe that the nature of human thinking, judgement, decision-making, and creativity can be codified and automated into a durable business advantage, then by all means, do your thing.

OR, you could invest in the training, resources, and yes, agentic AI-enabled IT stacks FOR your humans that will enable them to become…Metahumans. Humans with extraordinary paranormal cosmic mutant supernatural technological capabilities who will then embue their teams and new hires with metagenes and together with the Justice League…ok I’ve taken the comic book analogy too far, but that to me a durable business advantage.

I think my point is
1) My team has never let me down. Never. Not once. Never. (And it wasn’t because I was a good manager)
2) There are several forms of intelligence you should be investing in and
3) Everything I ever needed to learn in life I learned from comics. For everything else, I just ask Claude.

“The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” – Some dude, somewhere, some long time ago.

P.S. – If you remember reading the Sunday comics, I would encourage you to wear a glucose monitor for a couple weeks. This week I learned that my body can no longer absorb 2 pop tarts, 3 cans of Coke, a 12″ Subway Club, and a bowl of pasta every day.