Read Time = 3 minutes
Obviously, we hear a lot about AI nowadays.
Taking jobs. Replacing people. Creating opportunities. Changing industries. If you work in tech, it honestly feels like that’s all anyone talks about right now.
And I think most people believe the divide is going to be between the people who use AI versus the people who don’t.
I don’t think that’s true at all… especially in tech.
Pretty much everyone in tech is already using AI to some degree, that isn’t a shocker.
I can confidently say that every single sales person at my org uses ChatGPT &/or Claude every single day. You would have to be living under a rock if you didn’t.
However, the real divide is going to be between people who casually use AI… and the people who build systems around it.
I came across this image recently and it immediately caught my attention.
What is kind of shocking (but not really when you think about the world) is that globally a huge percentage of people still haven’t used AI at all… if we zoom specifically into the tech world, the picture changes fast.
Most people in our world are already represented by the green & yellow boxes.
They use AI here and there throughout the day to:
- ask questions
- summarize notes
- rewrite emails
- do some light account research
- fix a line of code, etc
And to be clear, that stuff is valuable. I do all of that too. But there are levels to it.
Because the people separating themselves right now are not just casually prompting AI back and forth all day & using it like a search engine. They are building systems around the way they work.
That tiny percentage of people in red?
The 0.04% of people who are building workflows, infrastructure, agents, automations, and operational systems… those are the ones who are creating real leverage.
Casual AI Use vs System Building
There’s a huge difference between:
“AI saved me 5 minutes”
and
“AI fundamentally changed the way I operate” ♜
Most people are still using AI as a tool. A much smaller group is starting to use AI as infrastructure. That’s a key difference operationally.
System builders are using AI at their advantage to create repeatable workflows that automatically trigger at a certain event. And are also able to use agents & MCP servers to connect tools together that leverage the context of both systems to increase the accuracy & output.
That is what creates leverage long term.
What This Looks Like In Real Life
When I was setting up Claude Cowork for work… honestly, it took a ton of time upfront.
Way more than people probably realize & I essentially had to sacrifice one whole weekend to get it set up at the basic level.
It takes a while to figure out how to get agents to behave, connect certain systems and tools, structure research properly, decide where files should live, etc.
At first, it almost feels inefficient because you are investing all this time upfront.
But the long-term leverage is where you start to see the value. Once those systems are built correctly:
- account research becomes faster
- messaging becomes faster
- preparation becomes faster
- workflows become scalable
- output quality becomes more consistent
You also aren’t spending time every day re-prompting AI trying to get the output you want. Your systems are already setup to produce the outputs you need.
The Bar Is Lower Than You Think
One thing I’ve also realized is that the bar is honestly still very low. Much lower than social media makes it seem.
A lot of people are using AI… like I said everyone on my team is. But I also know for a fact that most people on my team are using it to write their emails, summarize calls, and that is the gist of it.
Very few people are building actual workflows around their jobs, systems, or businesses.
The other benefit of starting to use AI at a deeper level is you start to learn & understand the systems on a much better level.
80% of learning is done by doing.
AI is moving fast. I now know that when Anthropic releases a new update I am not still learning how to setup Cowork, that has been done months ago. I am only learning how to use that one new feature that was shipped.
The people who figure out how to create leverage through systems now are going to have a massive advantage later. And based on the image above… we’re still early.
Very few people are building infrastructure around the way they work.
Start now, don’t wait.
Until next week.
– Rook ♜
ps… a few weeks ago I shared my Claude outbound system I’ve been building here