Is Copyright Dead in the Age of AI?

It’s a question more of us need to ask—especially those of us in creative industries, marketing, and any field built on ideas.

Here’s what I believe we should be discussing:

Where did our copyright laws come from in the first place?
They aren’t laws of physics—they’re social constructs designed to balance competing priorities: protecting creators, rewarding investment, fueling innovation, and benefiting society.

People often ask me why I’m so optimistic about AI—why I’m excited, not anxious, even as it feels like everything is shifting around us.

Here’s why: because life has taught me that certainty is an illusion. It’s something we cling to because we crave stability. But real life? It’s messy, unpredictable, and often shaped by moments that come without warning.

For the past 25 years, HR has become increasingly administrative—focused more on processing resumes and checking boxes than truly seeing and supporting the humans behind the roles.

Resumes are written to satisfy machines.
Recruiting is about parsing skillsets, not potential.
Promotions and pay are determined by data, not depth.

Digital Twins: Productivity Smart, Human Stupid?

Let’s talk digital twins. They’re coming—and there’s no avoiding it.

At first glance, digital twins sound like a game-changer in the workplace. Imagine this: every email, every meeting transcript, every bit of digital input—harnessed to create a digital twin of you. The idea? If you get hit by the proverbial bus, your knowledge isn’t lost. Your twin lives on, contributing value.

AI Isn’t Just a Tool — It’s a Mindset Shift

Adopting and adapting to AI isn’t about understanding the latest tools or mastering the tech. It’s about fundamentally rethinking what work is and how we do it.

Most of us still define work by:

• Our knowledge (limited)

• Our time (limited)

• Our speed (limited)

AI + Learning and Development: We’re Doing It Backwards I've been thinking a lot about how we use AI in training and development—and how much potential we’re leaving on the table. Too often, “learning” at work looks like a passive checklist:

• Watch these videos

• Read these slides

• Memorize these steps

It’s training by rote. Paint-by-numbers development. But let’s be honest: Real learning doesn’t come from slides. It comes from humans.

• It happens in meetings where you watch someone navigate a tough conversation.

• It’s in the quiet moments where a teammate shows you a better way to do something.

AI is reshaping recruiting—but not in the way you might think. As we step deeper into the age of AI, recruiting and hiring are evolving into something paradoxical: more machine-driven and more human-centered than ever before. Yes, AI can now parse resumes faster, match skills more precisely, and screen for experience with remarkable efficiency. We've been inching toward this for years—training candidates to write resumes for machines rather than people.

When we talk about AI and apocalyptic fears, we’re often referencing sci-fi tropes — sentient machines deciding humans are obsolete. But maybe the real story isn't about them. It's about us. Why do we assume a more intelligent entity will dominate, exploit, or destroy? Because that’s what we’ve done. Humanity has been the most dominant — and destructive — species on the planet. We've reshaped ecosystems, pushed out other species, and bent nature to our will.

Are you getting on the AI train? Not everyone is, and that’s completely fine—but it needs to be a deliberate choice. Whether you're embracing AI or choosing to ignore it, the key is understanding why. If you decide to hold off, make sure you can answer that question confidently: Why are you opting out?
If you’re diving in, the same applies: Why are you adopting and adapting?

Marketing Obesity in the Age of AI

We’re entering a phase where AI is being used as the "easy button" in marketing — mass-producing blog posts, videos, and ads at unprecedented speed and scale. But just like grabbing junk food out of convenience, we’re doing it because it’s easy — not because it’s meaningful. Take a brand like Carvana, for example. They generated over 1.3 million video assets overnight using AI. Impressive? Yes. Strategic? Not necessarily. This is what I call marketing obesity: content for the sake of content. No strategy. No intention. No connection. Just noise.

In the Age of AI, Storytelling Will Matter More Than Ever. We are entering a world of AI-driven marketing obesity — where brands, agencies, and marketers will flood every platform with more content, created faster and cheaper than ever before. But here’s the hard truth: more content doesn't mean better connection. And calling it a "story" doesn’t make it storytelling. Real storytelling moves people emotionally. Real storytelling builds relationships rooted in trust. Real storytelling makes us act — because emotion, not logic, drives human behavior.

AI isn’t just changing your tools—it’s changing the value you bring to the table. Much of what we do today is mechanistic—step-by-step, documentable, repeatable. That’s machine work. And AI is coming for it—not someday, but now. So the real question isn’t how do I protect my job? It’s: How do I evolve the value I create?

As AI transforms creativity, we face a powerful question: are we creating with machines, or like machines? Tools like Midjourney and Sora give us instant access to visuals from our imagination — scaling creativity at speed and cost. But let’s be clear: this is machine creative — brilliant at remixing, iterating, and replicating, but fundamentally rooted in the past.

What is your unique value? We’re entering an era where AI will outthink us. It will know more, compute faster, and process complexity at a scale we can’t touch. But here’s the opportunity: It forces us to reimagine what makes us valuable. For too long, many of us—especially in white-collar roles—have equated our worth with IQ. We’ve been trained to know, to solve, to be right. But AI’s rise is showing us that intelligence alone isn’t the full story.

Here's a conversation starter from Nish: How can we command AI to unleash human potential? AI is faster, smarter, and more knowledgeable than any of us—but it lacks purpose. It doesn’t dream. It doesn’t imagine. It doesn’t know where to go. That’s our job. The opportunity in front of us isn’t about fearing AI or letting it dictate the future—it’s about learning to command it.

Here's a conversation starter from Nish: The Org Chart Is Fading—What Comes Next? For decades, we've relied on the traditional org chart—rows and columns that neatly sort us into departments like sales, marketing, HR, and IT. It’s familiar. It gives us structure, a sense of place, and clear responsibilities. It turns an organization into a predictable algorithm. But here’s the reality: over time, we’ve been turning ourselves into machines—performing highly mechanistic work with deterministic outcomes. And now, as AI steps in, it’s taking over those repetitive, algorithmic tasks more efficiently than we ever could.

AI is changing every level of the org chart—including the C-suite. We often talk about AI replacing highly mechanized roles at the bottom of the org chart (think call centers, data entry, and administrative work). But here’s the reality: AI is also better at many executive-level tasks. For decades, executives have been trained to make decisions from spreadsheets. Maximizing shareholder value, optimizing costs, forecasting revenue—it’s all been about numbers, and AI can process those better than any human.

We’ve optimized everything—automation, efficiency, convenience. AI is taking over tasks at an unprecedented rate. But what happens when something becomes too abundant? It creates a new scarcity. And today, that scarcity is human connection.

We’re often afraid that AI will replace us, but that fear is based on a false assumption about who we are. Many believe AI is better than us because it processes information faster, thinks across all domains, and iterates at lightning speed. But that’s where we’re wrong. While AI excels at scaling and speeding up what we’ve done before, it doesn’t create the future in the way that humans can. It’s not just our brainpower that makes us unique; it’s our whole being. Love, for example, is something AI can never have, and it’s that very human experience that has driven us to achieve the impossible. We are the ones who will continue to create tomorrow, bringing all of ourselves to every new idea, invention, and breakthrough.

Every technological abundance creates a new scarcity. As AI enables automation and optimization at an unprecedented scale, the new scarcity will be human connection. In a world where machines handle tasks faster and more efficiently, we will increasingly seek out experiences that are deeply human. The future won’t just be about efficiency—it will be about experiences rooted in the 7 Cs of Human Labor: Curiosity, Creativity, Connection, Community, Collaboration, Culture and Cooperation (our ultimate superpower). Opportunities lie ahead for businesses and individuals who embrace this shift. The question is: How will you create value in a world where human connection is the new luxury?

AI isn’t here to replace us—it’s here to enable us. When I say AI is middleware for the human imagination, I mean that it gives all 8 billion people on the planet the ability to translate more of their imagination into reality. Think about it: - Have you ever had vivid images, stories, or ideas in your mind but lacked the tools or skills to bring them to life? - AI removes those barriers, acting as a thinking partner, a tasking partner—an extension of human creativity. - When more people can express their imaginations, we create stepping stones—ideas that others can build upon, recombine, and innovate from. This is why we are on the verge of a Cambrian explosion of creativity and discovery. The more imaginations we unlock, the more innovation we generate—for individuals and for humanity as a whole.

Here's a conversation starter from Nish: How Will AI Replace the Traditional Org Chart? For decades, organizations have operated like white-collar assembly lines, treating work as a step-by-step process with deterministic inputs and outputs—just like a factory supply chain. But with AI taking over the machine-like tasks that have defined our jobs, the traditional org chart is on the verge of collapse. AI is better, faster, and more consistent at machine work than humans. As AI takes over these repetitive processes, organizations have two choices: replace humans entirely or elevate them to focus on creativity, curiosity, and innovation. The real opportunity lies in the latter—using AI to free up human potential to drive differentiation and competitive advantage.

AI often seems like an enigma—powerful, complex, and almost magical. But is it really that complicated? The truth? AI is just technology—it follows where we lead it. The real challenge? Humans. We’re the unpredictable, creative, and sometimes irrational part of the equation. As AI continues to evolve, we must ask ourselves: What will AI be in service of? Will it simply accelerate our current pace, or will it shape our future in ways we’ve yet to imagine? We are at the start of the next renaissance—an era filled with both chaos and opportunity. With these new superpowers, we have the ability to bring more of our imagination into reality, and we can reimagine tomorrow.

Here's a conversation starter from Nish: Where is the True Source of Differentiation in the Age of AI? Most people are using AI in the most basic way—automating tasks, scaling workflows, and accelerating what we already do. But the real power of AI isn’t in doing yesterday’s work faster—it’s in creating entirely new possibilities for tomorrow. Think of AI as a meteor that crashed to Earth, revealing new elements on the periodic table— unlocking capabilities we’ve never had before. If scientists discovered a new element today, they wouldn’t just ask how to use it in existing formulas; they’d explore what entirely new things it makes possible. That’s how we should approach AI.

A meteor has crashed to Earth—and it’s called AI. But when we think of meteors, we often think of dinosaurs, and the common Hollywood-style myth that they all vanished instantly after impact. The truth? It took time. And extinction didn’t happen to all of them—some evolved, and we call them birds today. The same lesson applies to us. If your work today is 100% machine work, you may be in AI’s blast radius, especially if your organization is focused on short-term cost-cutting. But even if you’re outside the immediate impact zone, extinction is still coming—unless you choose evolution. AI isn’t just a one-time event. It’s a continuously evolving force, reshaping industries, organizations, and careers at an unprecedented speed. The question is: Will you adapt, or will you be left behind?

We’re in uncharted waters. Just like Magellan and his crew sailed out into the fog without a map, we are setting sail into the unknown with AI. There's no clear roadmap for how AI will reshape our world, but we’re on an incredible adventure to find our way forward. ust as sailors used lighthouses to find their way, we must have conversations—with ourselves, as teams, and as communities—to discover AI’s potential.

I've had multiple AI Big Bang moments, and as AI continues to evolve, we all should be experiencing more of them. AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a bridge between our ideas and reality. From storytelling to art, it amplifies our ability to imagine, create, and share. Just like humanity has gathered around campfires for centuries to tell stories of what could be, AI now helps bring those stories to life. The more we use these tools, the more we shape the future we want. Let’s embrace the power of AI and keep expanding our creative horizons.

Right now, it feels like we are all Magellan, setting sail into the unknown. Just as early explorers ventured out without maps or GPS, we are embarking on an AI journey without a clear roadmap. AI is unlike any other technology we’ve seen in the last hundred years—it will change everything. We don’t yet understand the full terrain of AI’s impact. But that’s both the challenge and the opportunity. Our task isn’t just to react—it’s to engage in conversation, experiment, and create lighthouses of understanding that guide us forward. This is more than just technological change—it’s a new Renaissance. Yes, there will be chaos, but also incredible new possibilities. The key is to actively shape AI’s future, asking what we want it to be in service of—as individuals, organizations, communities, and nations. We are all on this AI adventure together. Through dialogue, exploration, and discovery, we can illuminate the path forward—just as sailors once mapped the world.

We often talk about prompting AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude, but the real conversation should be: What is the future we want to prompt? AI is changing everything—but will it happen to us, or will we shape it? The future of AI shouldn’t be left to chance or just financial balance sheets. Instead, we need to ask: 1. What do we want to be? (Individually, as teams, organizations, and societies) 2. How do we want to leverage AI for human progress? 3. What role should AI play in shaping our collective future? If we don’t engage in these discussions, we risk becoming bystanders in an AI-driven world. But if we do, we can steer AI’s impact—turning it into middleware for human imagination rather than just another tool for profit.

We often think AI is the complex part of the equation. After all, it’s an incredibly sophisticated technology—thinking at scale and speed, with an IQ of 120+ and growing. But the truth is, AI is easy. It’s just a tool. We are the navigators. The real challenge? Humans. AI follows our direction, but what do we want it to be in service of? Scaling what we did yesterday, or shaping the possibilities of tomorrow? Maximizing financial balance sheets, or maximizing the human experience? We are at the start of a new Renaissance—a time of both chaos and opportunity. AI gives us the superpower to translate more of our imagination into reality. But the question is: What future do we want to create?