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Are You Ready For The AI Future?
Published May 18, 2025 · 62 views on YouTube
What does it mean to be “AI empowered” instead of just “tech enabled”?
Being AI empowered means taking an AI-first, AI-forward approach to how you collaborate with technology day to day, rather than simply having access to tools. Darby says the shift matters now because the pace of change, already accelerated by the internet, is speeding up further with AI, and treating AI as a forward-looking partner rather than a passive tool changes how you spend your time.
Why can’t AI replace human-to-human connection in business?
AI cannot empathetically connect with a human the way another human can, according to Darby. He points to mergers and acquisitions and real estate transactions as examples, deals that often carry heavy emotional weight, where the highest-value use of a person’s time is building relationships rather than automating the human side of the deal.
How should AI free up your time?
AI should take over the boring, redundant tasks that need to get done but don’t require you personally, similar to why people hire executive assistants and virtual assistants. Freeing yourself from that work lets you focus on the tasks only you can do: building the systems, relationships, and connections that actually move things forward.
What is the “one thing” exercise Darby recommends?
The one thing exercise, based on Gary Keller’s book, asks you to identify the single daily action that, by doing it, makes everything else easier or unnecessary. Darby uses it to do less while focusing more effectively, cutting down on tools and friction so that time goes toward finding the right tool, system, or person to support the highest-leverage work.
Full video transcript
Well, the speed of technology and change is happening faster than ever. The internet opened up so many new opportunities, caused a lot of change, but also enabled us as humans to do things that we’ve never done before. Now, with AI here, that change is only accelerated. It’s critical right now that we look at a shift from simply being tech enabled to being AI empowered, and taking an AI-first and AI-forward approach with how we are utilizing and collaborating with this technology in our day-to-day lives.
For me, that means actually figuring out ways that I could spend less time on my screen and more time building connections and relationships with our community and our ecosystem at Gen AI University. I think the same can be true for anything really that requires that human-to-human aspect of doing a transaction or building those relationships to put a deal together. And you see this a lot in the merger and acquisition space, with real estate professionals dealing with big-time transactions that often carry a lot of emotional weight to them.
And AI, at least from what I’ve seen, isn’t going to be able to empathetically connect with a human the way that a human can connect with another human. And if you’re selling, whether it is a product or a service, then you know that the highest-value, best use of your time is in building those relationships and freeing yourself up from tasks that take time and need to get done, but maybe somebody else is better suited to do them than you. It’s why a lot of people hire executive assistants and virtual assistants to help in supporting them in these tasks.
And it’s why I believe that having an AI-empowered approach, and thinking how can I be forward with using my AI in my day-to-day, makes my life easier, builds the systems that support me and what I want to do, and frees me up from doing all the boring, redundant stuff that you really don’t want to be spending your time doing.
A key here that I’ve found helpful is to actually do less and focus more effectively, with less tools and less friction in the process. The one thing prompts an exercise based on the Gary Keller book, which you can find a link to that video in the comments, thinking about the one thing daily that, by doing so, will make everything else easier or unnecessary.
If that’s a matter of finding the right tool, the right system, or the right person to support you, then make sure you’re focusing on those things to free you up for what matters most. I think if you want to be AI empowered versus simply tech enabled, then that should be something you consider in your day-to-day too. See you in the next video.