Innovating with AI - How To Think About AI in 2025

Hey there,

In case you missed it, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy dropped some stats about “Amazon Q” - their generative AI assistant.

After testing internally with developers, the highlights are in:

• Time Savings: “4,500 developer years of work”
• Cost Savings: $260M in annualized efficiency gains

Staggering numbers for sure, but if you wind back the clock to just 6 months ago, none of the ‘experts’ saw this coming.

In fact, ‘twas quite the opposite - back then, headlines looked more like this:

“Amazon’s AI Chatbot “Q” struggles with ‘hallucinations’ amid criticism for rushed launch - (source here).

Critics chomped at Amazon because they were late to the AI game - lagging behind rivals like Microsoft and Google.

Now, ‘cut scene’ to the present day and you’ve got Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman saying that AI could dominate coding tasks as soon as 2025.

Heh.

If you ask me, he’s late to the game because at HDC, my tech firm, we’ve revolutionized how we develop and deliver code to all of our clients.

The change isn’t coming.
The change is already here.

But what does this mean for you, and the ever changing landscape of AI?

Well, let’s talk about…

How To Think About AI in 2025

Before I dive in, some quick context:

Back in 2023, I created a presentation called how to “Future Proof Your Career for the Age of AI” and in it, I gave a controversial answer to a frequently asked question:

Q: “Which programming language do I need to learn?”

A: Thinking “I need to learn to code” is a recipe for failure. The new strategy is to avoid coding.

Now, 1 year later, Amazon’s Web Services CEO is saying “If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time - I can’t predict where it is - it’s possible that most developers are not coding”.

He went on to say that a developer’s skill set extends beyond coding to include innovation and creating engaging products for end users.

Now, I didn’t ask him for a glowing endorsement of everything we do here at Innovating with AI but I’ll take it 😎.

Jokes aside, this isn’t a laughing matter.

​Studies have already shown that 37% of companies have already replaced staff with AI tech, and 44% predict AI will lead to layoffs throughout 2024.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution wave that AI is a part of isn’t coming - it’s already here.

And while the rest of the world worries about the unstoppable wave, I want you to ride it to brand new heights.

How?

Well, you can start right now by using one of the mental models I created to predict AI changes (a full year before the CEOs above started talking about it).

I call it…

The New AI Reality

If you’ve been in the world of professional services for any length of time, then even if you don’t recognize the name, you’ve probably seen some Venn Diagrams similar to this. It’s called the “iron triangle of service” and the basic explanation goes like this:

Good, fast, cheap — pick two, because you can never have all three.

Want it good and cheap? Then it won’t be fast.
​Want it fast and good? Then it won’t be cheap.
​Want it fast and cheap? Then it won’t be good.

Impossible to have all three…until now.

AI has changed this, permanently.

Good, fast, and cheap is the new reality (thanks AI!)

And as strange as it might have sounded when I first spoke about this a year ago, news article after news article continues to prove it true.

Seriously, if you wrote an article with the headline saying some software saved “4,500 developer years of work” - it’d have been laughable.

But what was impossible, became possible.
And what was possible, has now become real.
And in time, what has become real, will become ordinary.

If you’ve been “AI curious” for some time, then there has literally never been a better time to become an AI innovator.

However, with all these multi-billion dollar tech companies throwing out ginormous numbers around AI, I know it can leave some of us wondering…

“Where the heck do I even start?”

Well, sometimes, the best place to start is actually just to see some real life examples of people who are making it happen right now.

I’m not talking about multinational CEOs that you’ll never meet - but rather, regular folks next door who are figuring out AI for themselves, their clients, and people they’re inspired to help.

If that sounds interesting, then keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow, and I’ll introduce you to one of our AI Incubator students who 30x’d his business without an AI product.

To your best year yet,

– Rob from Innovating with AI