Mike McBride Online

Artificial Intelligence

Worth Reading – The great AI delusion is falling apart
ByMike McBride July 23, 2025July 23, 2025 Reading Time: 3 minutes

This reminded me of something I’ve long wondered about some of the measurements provided by fans of AI – the processes that take so much less time than they used to. Are they looking at the whole picture? I know that sales demos do not. They’ll claim to have created an entire business plan in 15 minutes using AI, while waving away any questions about how much time it would take someone to review, edit, and correct the business plan in question. Creating a business plan the old-fashioned way requires research, writing, rewriting, confirming details, and so on. With a couple of prompts, I have one, but will I then put in the same effort to verify that the draft pushed out by my AI tool is accurate and workable for my business?

If so, where is the time saved?

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Career

Pay Them Enough to Care Or Stop Expecting Them To
ByMike McBride July 21, 2025July 21, 2025 Reading Time: 3 minutes

You still have people performing tasks in exchange for a paycheck. They have no reason to feel like they matter. They’re ultimately replaceable. You remind them of that in a million little ways, then expect them to feel dedicated to the work your company does. That makes no sense.

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Career | Mental Health | Travel

Do You Feel Pressured to Work From the Plane?
ByMike McBride July 18, 2025July 19, 2025 Reading Time: 3 minutes

Years from now, is anyone going to remember that thing you tied yourself into a pretzel to complete while 30,000 feet in the air? It’s unlikely. But your body and brain will be affected by the rest you didn’t get.

The goal of life is not to spend every minute being productive. There’s so much more than that.

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Artificial Intelligence | LawFirms

Worth Reading – AI Is Killing The Billable Hour (And It’s About Time)
ByMike McBride July 16, 2025July 16, 2025 Reading Time: 3 minutes

For lawyers and other professionals, billing hours is indeed a dumb approach. It hasn’t made sense in years. If AI finally pushes that out of our way, we’ll owe it thanks for that alone. I don’t think AI is good enough to do work on its own, though, so the question then becomes, what are we billing for? Where’s the work? Do you have solid baselines for how much value AI brings versus how much a human is having to contribute to make up for times when the AI falls short, and who decides that?

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Mental Health

Worth Reading – Poor mental health is driving young people out of their jobs. My own journey showed me how to help
ByMike McBride July 14, 2025July 13, 2025 Reading Time: 2 minutes

Then, when the labor market pendulum swings back the other way and there aren’t enough qualified workers to fill the jobs that it turns out AI can’t do, these same workplaces will come out talking about how they’ve always supported worker mental health, they even have an EAP hotline for workers!

Could you not buy it for a second? If they aren’t doing it now, they don’t care. If they don’t care, you owe them nothing more than what your wages buy them. This is what young people in the workplace understand, and many of us who have been around are starting to see as well. We owe them nothing more than what they pay for. The rest of our lives belong to us.

Read More Worth Reading – Poor mental health is driving young people out of their jobs. My own journey showed me how to help
Artificial Intelligence | Career | Mental Health

Worth Reading – AI is turbocharging worker productivity but it’s also wreaking havoc on their mental health
ByMike McBride July 12, 2025July 11, 2025 Reading Time: 1 minute

It’s the classic conundrum for workers. If you’re the most productive member of your team, what’s your reward?

More work.

If you’re the most productive member of your team using AI, what’s your reward?

More work, while being more isolated, to work with the AI.

Read More Worth Reading – AI is turbocharging worker productivity but it’s also wreaking havoc on their mental health