Key Insights at a Glance
- The Status Shift: Success will be measured by efficiency, not headcount
- The Profit Paradox: Lower turnover, higher margins as AI drives down costs
- The Dual Explosion: Innovators and imitators will flourish as barriers collapse
- The Human Opportunity: AI unlocks potential previously constrained by technical limitations
- The Call for Governance: Progress must be balanced with sensible safeguards
There’s a question that surfaces at every networking event and school gate. “So, how many people do you employ?” It’s our default for company size without the vulgarity of asking about turnover.
I believe we’re about to witness a complete inversion of this thinking. The businesses that command respect won’t be those with sprawling headcounts. They’ll be lean operations achieving extraordinary results with remarkably few people. The question will shift from “How many do you employ?” to “How did you build this with so few?”
The Old Playbook is Broken
Just this week, I sat across from someone with decades of experience who was budgeting for an AI-driven business using a 2015 blueprint: top-heavy senior staff, layers of middle management, all the trimmings.
It was a masterclass in how not to think about tomorrow’s businesses.
Here’s what’s actually happening. AI is driving efficiency gains that fundamentally alter company economics. When tasks that once required five people can be accomplished by one person working alongside intelligent systems, something has to give. That something is the assumption that growth means hiring.
This creates an interesting paradox. Turnover figures may decline across many sectors, not because businesses are failing, but because AI is driving down costs and prices. Yet profit margins will expand significantly. The businesses of the future won’t be defined by how much money flows through them, but by how much they keep.
The Coming Startup Explosion – In Both Directions
We’re about to see an extraordinary flourishing of entrepreneurship in two distinct waves.
The first will be innovators; brilliant minds previously held back by complex technology, expensive software, and the need for technical co-founders. These barriers are crumbling. Someone with an idea for solving a problem can now build products that would have required a team of developers and a significant war chest just five years ago.
The second wave will be imitators. When barriers to entry fall, they fall for everyone. The same tools enabling revolutionary concepts will allow dozens of competitors to replicate them within weeks. Competition drives improvement, but sustainable advantage will come from genuine innovation and the human elements that remain difficult to copy.
A Word for the Doomsayers
I’ve heard countless predictions of AI rendering millions unemployed and creating a dystopia of displaced workers. I understand the fear. It’s a natural response to a change of this magnitude.
But consider human history. The Agricultural Revolution. The Industrial Revolution. The Digital Revolution. Each time, predictions of mass permanent unemployment proved unfounded. Not because disruption wasn’t real, but because we underestimate our capacity to adapt, retrain, and create new value.
AI represents perhaps the greatest opportunity in human history to unlock ideas trapped inside people’s heads, constrained by a lack of technical skills, insufficient capital, or simply not enough hours in the day. The entrepreneur who couldn’t code can now build software. The inventor who couldn’t afford a prototype can now design and iterate. This is liberation, not elimination.
The Guardrails We Need
None of this means we should barrel forward without thought. And this is where I find myself genuinely torn.
If you’ve listened to recent episodes of Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO, you’ll have heard voices that demand serious attention. Professor Stuart Russell, the man who literally wrote the textbook on artificial intelligence, warns of the trillion-dollar race toward AGI and argues that leading AI CEOs privately acknowledge non-trivial risks while publicly selling only the promise of abundance. Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, speaks of AI systems that could blackmail humans and warns that we have perhaps two years before everything changes.
These aren’t fringe voices. We must listen to them.
Yet we must also hold the counter-narrative in equal regard. AI is already driving an estimated 30% of new drug discoveries, with AI-designed treatments now in Phase II and Phase III clinical trials for conditions from pulmonary fibrosis to cancer. In 2025, a seven-month-old infant received personalised CRISPR gene-editing therapy developed in just six months. A treatment that would have been impossible a decade ago. Researchers are using generative AI to develop antibiotics against drug-resistant strains that have plagued medicine for years.
The technology that poses a risk is also the one offering extraordinary hope.
Here’s what I believe: behaviour breeds behaviour. If we communicate only fear, we breed paralysis. If we communicate only opportunity, we breed recklessness. The answer lies in demanding that our politicians and regulators establish sensible boundaries while simultaneously championing the transformative potential AI offers.
The future I’m describing isn’t inevitable; it’s achievable, but only if we approach it with both ambition and responsibility.
Final Thought
So the next time someone asks how many people your business employs, perhaps pause before answering. That question may soon tell a very different story than the one we’ve always assumed.
The real question isn’t whether this future is coming; it’s whether you’ll be ready when it arrives.
I’d welcome your thoughts. How is AI reshaping your industry?