What Is the Real Currency of AI If It Isn't Speed?
Less than three months ago one client said they didn’t think artificial intelligence (AI) was really pertinent to their business, now rapid adoption of AI tools is part of its top four strategic objectives.
Another client said they knocked the socks off an enterprise retailer by producing an agentic tool that cut their end-to-end product creation lifecycle from 18 months to four days—in a weekend.
Then, I sat with another client and produced a branded landing page, fully clickable prototype with a chatbot, questionnaire, scoring system, and product offering with paywalls with little more than a drafted product strategy—in three hours.
Soon after, another client told me he built a go-to-market (GTM) super agent made up of agents that research target companies, draft proposals, and create storytelling content, for which I jokingly (not so jokingly) asked, “are you replacing me with agents?”
The speed in which AI can help us analyze data, brainstorm ideas, build technologies, and generate creative is becoming mind boggling—accelerated.
I can draft a contract in moments. I can retouch an image in seconds. I can create a whole LinkedIn campaign in minutes. I can generate a whole photoshoot in a click. I can analyze hours of client interviews in an hour. The list goes on.
And it’s got me thinking—is speed really the currency?
I think we all need to work AI into our business and personal strategies, consider how we’re restructuring our businesses for a blended AI workforce, know how to leverage multiple AI tools to create clickable prototypes, and consider the parts of our roles that can be done with agents—but not for speed.
The real currency for AI is to:
Clearly convey new ideas. We can now go beyond describing what we mean to our colleagues to showing them with rapid prototypes that can win alignment, buy in, and investment dollars.
Increase space for human-to-human connection. We’re able to spend more time in high-empathy interviews, leadership activities, client management, and complex planning.
Increase time for complex problem-solving. When we aren’t bogged down by routine, repeatable tasks, we can spend more time in workshops unpacking complex problems together.
If we’re just focused on speed, we may miss a few key marks when bringing this new technology to market:
We’ll create AI for AI sake. AI-first startup, company, solution, fill in the blank is not novel nor inherently valuable anymore. Shift the narrative from building novelty to solving core business problems that drive measurable revenue or cost reduction.
We’ll build in the wrong direction. Just because we can all create apps doesn’t mean we’re creating them for meaningful use cases that solve validated problems. Without strategic problem validation, speed simply accelerates resource waste and creates tools destined for shelfware.
We’ll produce surface-level babble. Just because the essay is 20 pages long, doesn’t mean it said anything of genuine insight and actionable value. The volume of AI-generated content diminishes the value of everything published, demanding a new premium on human synthesis and strategic insight.
We’ll sacrifice quality. Rushing to deploy a solution often means cutting corners on testing, security, and governance, which increases long-term risk and erodes trust. In an autonomous environment, trust is the system's most vulnerable point; speed without robust compliance and risk-mitigation architecture is simply accelerating liability.
We’ll get stuck on shiny POCs. Without a clear strategy for operationalization, initial Proofs of Concept (POCs) will fail to move from experiment to production, resulting in stranded costs and knowledge silos. The real currency is not in creating a demonstration but in designing the scalable, secure foundations required to successfully move autonomous agents from isolated experiments to enterprise-wide production.
So, where I’ve landed is that the ultimate commodity is strategic, creative, and human capacity with the use of AI. By automating the repeatable and accelerating components of the existing processes, AI reallocates human energy to the highest-value activities—cultivating trusted relationships, integrating business systems, and stitching complex problems into one, cohesive solution for growth.
Want help finding strategic capacity and turning it into a competitive advantage? We can help.
