By Ian Ortega
As everyone gets worked up by the growth in artificial intelligence, questions keep being raised; ‘how do we future proof ourselves?’ I have always argued that there are two ways to bet on the world.
Number One: Betting on things that change aka Trends
Number Two: Betting on things that don’t change aka Principles
But first, a short story. I recently met with my friend, Sahle. I was impressed with her sense of style. I told her she was the best dressed of the night. And it was with how her personality was able to shine through her sense of fashion, how she experimented with the attires, how she broke fashion rules created a ‘Sahle’ house of fashion. And not to demean the other girls that were at the same lounge that night, but Sahle was outstanding. The other girls I could describe as conformist, they had worn what they think everyone should be wearing on a night out. And for Uganda, that often means anything that is skimpy and shows more skin.
What was I wearing? Well, I was formal to the cut. Formal in the sense that even if I had walked in without a reservation, one would have been created for me. And together with Sahle, we paired up and created the best dressed of the night. We uplifted the aura of the place, without doing much, but with paying homage to our authentic tastes and styles.
Now that brings me to the world of the future. The only way to future-proof yourself for the future is to bet on things that don’t change. In a world where everyone is struggling to look the same, where everyone is conforming to the same styles, authenticity and uniqueness is the only true advantage. I have received numerous advice on how to run O.G, on what to benchmark it on. But I realized the best thing is to listen to all those people and then go out and do none of what they say. And in that case, O.G is able to build moats based on uniqueness. If you come here, you are not reading some website that’s trying to sound a certain way, no, we are here to sound as authentically as O.G as we can.
So, in the world of Artificial Intelligence, the ability to cultivate your own style and taste is going to be a unique identifier, it will set you apart. Imagine the new world as full of tools, but you must be creative to know what to do with the tools, to combine the tools in different ways to create a beautiful array, a range of universes. You can’t copy style and taste; you must work at cultivating it. You must hone it. That’s what my friend Sahle has done over the years, she just has a unique feel to things, she has developed the intuition, that sense of how to rock anything and make magic with it. You are going to need more of this if you are to future-proof yourself in the world of artificial intelligence.