“Try AI. It will make you more efficient,” every executive at least once in the past three months.
And it always makes me laugh.
Yes, AI will make save you time and effort. Eventually. But not on the timeline you, or your boss, is comfortable with.
A story that proves the rule
A few days ago, I spent 4 hours building a single AI tool for one research task.
Some context: I use AI Daily and have built prompts, tools and agents to streamline regular tasks. The idea came from a Whop site that I use regularly, which outlined the specific tools, prompts, and steps required to successfully build an AEO (answer engine optimization) scanning tool.
That’s why I only blocked four hours for the build.
To build the tool, I created new accounts on four different websites, worked in Terminal, Claude Cowork, and Claude Code, and referred to instructions from both the originating website and Claude.
If I had a boss or an IT department, neither would be happy with me.
Why? After all, I built a tool for a task that was too complicated and time-consuming to do previously, will run automatically every week, recommends practical fixes, and measures impact against meaningful business metrics.
I’ve also had bosses that, if I told them I spent 10% of my week on this, would say, “that’s nice but where do we stand on (fill in the blank).”
The cost of efficiency
“Lean is the enemy of learning,” according to MIT professor, Ben Armstrong. That’s as true for AI in the office as it is on the manufacturing floor.
Learning is inherently inefficient. Baked into the experience are user mistakes, unexpected outcomes, and dead ends. But those mistakes, outcomes, and dead ends generate the insights required to increase the odds the next attempt will succeed.
As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”
When we do ultimately succeed, we almost immediately forget time, money, and effort the learning cost us. But forgetting is what makes harder to keep learning. And it results in nonsense like, “try AI. It will make you more efficient.”
The value of waste
Next time you’re tempted to say, “try AI,” stop and ask yourself these five questions:
- “Why am I saying this?” Do you really believe that AI is a solution to the problem you’re hearing or are you just saying it because the company is pushing AI? If it’s the latter, just provide a solution to the problem. If it’s the former, keep reading.
- “What does ‘efficiency’ look like?” As with all experiments, define success first. Do you expect time to completion to be cut in half? Or for it to take just as long, with fewer people? Or maybe it simply costs less. Without a goal, AI is just a toy.
- “How long am I willing to wait for efficiency?” Efficiency doesn’t magically appear the moment a prompt or tool spits out a response. Are you willing to dedicate an hour a week, even if it takes six months to be efficient. Or is success expected in a day, no matter how many hours?
- “Am I willing to pay the cost of learning?” The costs of learning go beyond trainings and tools. It’s the opportunity cost of time spent on another project, calls to customers, conversations with consumers, engagement in meetings. If you’re not willing to pay all those costs, don’t encourage people to “try AI.”
- “How will I reward and spread this learning?” Your “learning waste” can create value for your organization. But only if you reward the people who did the work and spread the learning beyond your team, enabling people to build on what’s known with less “waste.”
“Try AI” is a shortcut to avoid the hard and inefficient work of learning. But paying the cost is the only way to earn the efficiency.