6 years ago, Naval went on the Joe Rogan for the first time. If you’re anything like me, that episode was a a very impactful conversation. Naval was discussing ideas that not a lot of people, especially public figures (which he wasn’t exactly one of at the time), were discussing.
It was also the first time I really heard anyone talk about AI. I never had a technical background. I was an art student.
And in that podcast there was a quote, which 6 years later, post ChatGPT, post Claude Code, is still pretty damn accurate:
"I do believe that automation, over a long enough period of time, will replace every non-creative job, or every non-creative work. But that's great news! That means that all of our basic needs are taken care of, and what remains for us is to be creative."
Many people have critized this claim, saying that Naval was entirely wrong – that AI actually replaced creative jobs first. But this, in my opinion, isn’t true. People’s ideas of what a creative job actually is, is wrong.
As with most things, AI users exits on a bell curve.
On the left, you have people fully embracing AI. Mostly due to FOMO, or unrealistic expectations. But they’re embracing it. They’re using it to write their exams, help with their jobs, etc.
But they’re also using it to reply to X posts, sending terrible cold emails, writing “It’s not struggle—It’s sacrifice” posts. They’re the ones that setup OpenClaw on a Mac Mini and stopped using it 2 weeks later when it didn’t autonomously replace their entire business.
In the middle, you have people rejecting AI. Saying it’s a fad, a bubble – that it is a dystopian poison that ruins any form of creativity.
Then, on the right, you have the people who actually see where AI is useful right now.
AI is very limited in what it can do, all things considered. It’s not magic. It breaks at scale. It hallucinates and breaks. It fluctuates day by day.
But, it is really good at certain things. And those things are generally low leverage tasks. They’re things that someone who is an expert at their thing, whatever that thing is, shouldn’t be doing.
The video editor is using AI to make their rough cuts. To chunk down terabytes of footage into a starting timeline which they can refine. Because that initial rearranging, removing silences, cutting stutters, is usually the same process every time.
The copywriter is using AI to write the base foundation of a sales letter, since they usually follow a rough guideline. It’s writing different leads, finding different angles, pulling research from where their audience hangs out.
The designer is using AI to create mockups, pull different inspiration and assemble general directions they can go. It’s not one-shotting a logo. But it’s understanding the designers process, and helping them not start from a blank canvas.
The people who are the best at what they do - the one’s that are actually adopting new technology as it rolls out - are not using AI to replace what they are the best at. Because that is impossible. At least, it’s impossible for the distant future.
They are using AI to allow them to spend more time doing what they are the best at.
Which, according to Naval (according to my interpretation) – IS the creative work. Rough editing, mocking up starting points for design, doing market research – just because they are a PART of the creative process, does not mean they are inherently creative jobs. They aren’t unique to creative people.
The video editor knows how to invoke emotion in their videos. They know pacing, storytelling, how music and visuals and sound effects all blend together to convey what they’re trying to convey. They grew up watching Casey Neistat, they have 400 reviews on LetterBoxd. AI could never replicate this.
The copywriter knows how to hook people in, how to open loops and create curiosity, how to put themselves in the readers’ shoes and talk to them on their level. They read all of the classic direct response sales letters, they have vintage Porsche posters on their wall. AI could never replace this.
The designer knows how to translate a brand’s identity into a 1500x1500 square. How to condense an entire company ethos into a single graphic. How to use spacing, typography, colour palettes to hit the viewer right between the eyes. They were using Illustrator in highschool to make flat design profile YouTube banners, they know why company rebrands always kill reputation. AI could never replace this.
AI is not meant to replace this. It’s not engineered to replace this.
AI is engineered to synthesize massive data sets as fast as possible. It is trained to find the median answer, the most statistically likely accurate answer. It’s not meant to be an expert, to understand the nuance that comes from experience.
When Microsoft Excel released, it levelled an entire industry. It was a massive, massive adoption cycle. Panic and excitement and “holy shit, this is going to save us so much time.”
But nobody was using it to design logos, or write essays, or edit documentaries.
As with AI, it was a bellcurve. And a lot of companies got rocked by refusing to adopt the new technology, to invest the time and resources into training their employees, taking a temporary hit in productivity to gain 10x of it back.
You could technically use Excel to write an essay, or design a logo. But it wasn’t designed to do that.
It was designed to do one thing, very well.
But, by virtue of this, it enabled people to do their thing better. It didn’t save the designer, the writer, the video editor, 10 hours a week of their work. But it did make accounting easier. And the time they would have spent manually tracking expenses, could now be spent doing the thing they are good at.
This is how AI is supposed to be used.
It enables humans who are good at something, to spend more time doing the thing they’re good at. Just as electricity, the automobile, and running water saved people hours a day that could then be spent doing what they should be doing.
Example: This article. I’d never use AI to write an article. And I have really, really good AI writing systems.
I have a decent sized following because of my writing. And a lot of those people have come from long form content I’ve written in the past. So, I’d much rather use AI to delegate things that would be taking time away from writing articles.
Another great example: I posted this promo video for my offer a few days ago:
I will build you a custom AI marketing team that replaces 15+ hours of work per week - trained on your business I'm taking 5 businesses through an 8 week sprint where I personally build a full system - strategy, landing pages, emails, content Apply: https://webuildyouroffer.com/ai-marketing
Because AI helped me wireframe the script, pull different pieces of research from my database, dig up testimonials for me, and handled most of the cutting in the editing process - I was then able to spend more time making it look cool. I’ve been trying to teach myself videography, learning how to colour grade in Davinci, etc.
I am able to spend time on unscalable things, because the scalable things have been automated by AI.
And when everybody can use AI to write the same slop video scripts, or generate full AI videos – I am able to stand out with a unique(ish) style. Which not only makes the overall product better, but gives me an even deeper moat against AI.
Too many of us are missing the forest from the trees.
AI isn’t meant to replace your CMO. It’s meant to replace the manual labour, the tracking, the dragging-and-dropping, the managing, the testing, the editing - so your CMO can spend more time doing what they’re great at: Strategy and execution.
Engineers figured this out early (as they always do). AI didn’t replace 10 years of experience fixing bugs, creating interfaces that are easy to use, fortifying backends that won’t break at scale. But it replaced the grunt work that is required when starting a project.
Do an internal audit today. How many hours are you spending working on things that could be delegated? If you had a hard-working assistant who knew what you knew, used the same tools as you, understood how you liked things to be done?
And, on the flip side – how much more time could you be spending on the things that YOU are uniquely positioned to do. The reason people buy from you over others. Or the reason you got hired over the other interviewees.
Use AI for what it was designed for. And use your creativity for what that was designed for, too.
"A lot of the advances in so-called AI today are what we call narrow AI. There's nothing approaching what we call creative thinking." – Naval
– RL