Turns out, 'AI for everyone' was not the winning move | Understand AI for December 23, 2025
More AI everywhere doesn’t mean better results. Small teams of AI experts beat mass licenses. Attackers now use AI to run cybercrime at machine speed. Leaders can’t keep up. Tools still forget us. The winners? Focused expertise and hybrid AI, not AI everywhere.
Imagine you have a bunch of teams, some with AI, some without, and some where everyone gets their own AI. Researchers ran a big experiment with over 400 people to see what actually happens when you mix and match humans and AI in different ways.
Here's what they found: Teams with AI did better than teams without it. But giving every team member their own AI didn't help at all.
🐦⬛
So all those bulk ChatGPT Enterprise licenses your company just bought? Yeah, about that...
In fact, it was better to have just one or two people as the team's 'AI experts' than to spread the AI around. More AI doesn't always mean better results.
🐦⬛
Turns out we're rediscovering the ancient wisdom of "specialization" but with chatbots
If you put one person with an AI up against a regular team, they do about the same. But a team with a couple of AI-savvy people still comes out on top.
🐦⬛
The "I'll just replace my entire team with Claude" fantasy officially meets data
So, the magic isn't in going solo with AI, but in having a team that knows how to use it well.
So why does this matter? Because it turns a lot of our usual thinking about AI upside down.
🐦⬛
Every "democratize AI access" strategy document just became very expensive confetti
Instead of giving everyone an AI license, pick one or two people on your team to become the real AI pros. Let them get really good at asking the right questions, figuring out how to use AI in your work, and sharing what they find. They become your team's AI translators, just like a tech lead helps everyone talk to the engineers.
🐦⬛
We've invented the position of "prompt whisperer" and honestly, that's where we are as a civilization
For some jobs, like writing reports or pulling together research, one person with an AI can do as much as a whole team. But when you need lots of different viewpoints or real teamwork, a group with a couple of AI experts still does better than a lone wolf.
🐦⬛
The hermit genius with an AI assistant is a beautiful myth, filed next to "this meeting could have been an email"
Forget about those one-size-fits-all AI training sessions.
🐦⬛
Your two-hour mandatory AI lunch-and-learn just got demoted to "well-intentioned waste of time"
Instead, train a few people to be your team's AI coordinators. They'll turn your team's questions into smart AI prompts and bring the answers back to everyone else.
The big idea? Don't spread AI thin. Focus your expertise. Figure out which jobs really need a team, and which ones a single person (with AI) can handle just fine.
🐦⬛
And if you're currently budgeting for company-wide AI licenses, maybe... don't?
