I drew the 24th hexagram—Return—from the oracle this morning, and it’s been lingering in my mind. “Success. Going out and coming in without error. Friends come without blame.” There’s something about returning, circling back to what matters, that feels urgent as I reflect on a couple of conversations I’ve had recently. Sipping my cup of cacao, I’m piecing together thoughts on AI’s relentless march and what it means to hold onto the human core—let me walk you through it.
Just yesterday afternoon, I was out with CJ, an early TrueSight DAO member, Mark, a lifelong friend, and their buddy Thomas. We got into the weeds about AI, and one thing jumped out at me: if you don’t have a software background, the implications of what’s happening in this space are almost invisible. It’s like describing color to someone who’s never seen it. I mentioned how Singapore’s government is offering SGD$5,000 per citizen to upskill in AI—a solid move—but without a mental model of how systems interlock, many are just spinning their wheels. Worse, some folks are convinced they should ditch their specialized fields and jump into AI tech roles, not realizing those are the exact positions likely to get flattened by automation.
I shared my take with them, and it’s pretty straightforward—zero in on what’s uniquely yours, the stuff a machine can’t replicate. Take CJ, who’s building a name as a photographer in Japan, capturing weddings for American couples. He was tempted to scale the old-school way, recruiting and training other photographers, but I pointed out that’s a shaky foundation. Once trained, they could easily become his rivals. Instead, I suggested he outsource the peripheral stuff—emails, admin—and focus on the heart of his craft: the experience he creates through the lens. I put it to him like this—sniping with a camera is like a samurai striking with a sword. It’s poetic, sure, but a strike is an honest expression of the samurai’s soul. To give anything less is to disrespect the life before you. So, hone that camera technique until, when you snap a photo of a newlywed bride, her soul is captured on film. That’s the irreplaceable bit.
Mark, on the other hand, has been out of work for two years and is eyeing remote data entry gigs at $15 an hour. I get the appeal, but I nudged him toward something with more runway—upskilling to manage agents handling business process outsourcing (BPO). It’s the kind of role that could free up someone like CJ to stay present with his couples instead of drowning in paperwork. Then there’s Thomas, who’s in sales but itching to pivot to tech or AI for the paycheck. I had to be real with him: a lot of back-office tech jobs are on the chopping block. What isn’t going anywhere, though, is the human trust factor. People still want to look someone in the eye—figuratively or literally—when making big decisions. Sales, rooted in connection, has staying power.
Rewind to another chat—lunch yesterday with Mimrah from Meltwater. With large language models (LLMs) proliferating, their platform now stretches beyond text analytics to videos and other media. Impressive stuff, but I still sense that B2B enterprise sales relationships—built on trust—are holding strong. For now. We dug into the long-term picture, and I brought up the Uber/Lyft versus Waymo dynamic. Ride-sharing drivers are in for a rough ride when autonomous vehicles hit the market. Even if they don’t, consumers will start pricing human effort against bot utility, and the rates drivers can command will get squeezed—hard.
We also chewed on the state of enterprise software companies, whose margins are often guarded by human trust as a barrier to entry. That’s eroding as LLMs get sharper and tech firms with professional services arms get better at selling. It’s a prisoner’s dilemma: short term, they’re battling in a red ocean for slim margins against rivals, not banking enough to train their own LLMs. Long term, the LLM giants will start carving up their market share. I told Mimrah the counterplay might be an offline component—robotics, for instance—that forces LLM companies to fragment their platform strategies into the physical, “atom” space. That’s a real moat.
Mimrah brought up a fascinating window—five years to arbitrage China’s robotics tech, which is currently bottled up domestically. Their government is all-in on weaving AI into manufacturing, and last year’s output hit 1% of global GDP. It’s working, and they’re also partnering with local LLM companies to drive deployment costs down. The clock’s ticking.
All this tech talk circles me back to the oracle—Return. In an age where LLMs are swallowing up back-office tasks, relics of the industrial era, something I read in Zen literature keeps resonating. People crave to be seen, to feel intimacy from another sentient being. Machines can’t touch that. Think of a priest at a funeral, offering solace to a grieving family, or a nurse cradling a newborn—there’s a presence, a shared vulnerability, that no algorithm can mimic. As the Dalai Lama put it, being human means showing vulnerability and intimacy so another feels truly seen. That’s compassion, pure and simple.
Key Observations:
- AI’s impact is a blind spot for many without a tech lens—upskilling initiatives are great, but mental models are lagging.
- The future belongs to what’s uniquely human or personal—whether it’s CJ’s soul-capturing photography or the trust in a sales relationship.
- Enterprise software’s trust barrier is fading; offline plays like robotics might be the next frontier to counter digital dominance.
- Amid automation’s sweep, the human hunger for connection—intimacy, presence—stands unshaken.
Reflections for the Day:
I’m left pondering what “return” means in this context. How do we come back to the soul of our work, our interactions, as AI reshapes the landscape? How do we protect and nurture those human spaces no bot can enter? And what about you—what’s the core you’re returning to, or protecting, as tech surges forward?
- Technology
- AI
- Human Connection