Let's Read Your AI Future

Everyone "knows" the future and how AI will disrupt it:

AI companies says it will be glorious​
Privacy experts says it will be a hellscape​
Copyright holders says it's still illegal​
Your boss says you will use AI (whether you like it or not)
Your CEO says "More AI- all gas no brakes"

and Dan Newman from Learn to Scale says this is a perfect time for a tarot card reading. Let's ask the cards what they think the future has in store for us.

Card 1 (The Past): The Devil

In a traditional chronological tarot card reading, the first card symbolizes the past: What events or historical baggage brought you to this current moment?

Here’s the open secret: your team have been and are using AI right now. Your marketers are bouncing ideas off Claude, your project leads are making AI-generated progress reports, performance reviews are increasingly covered in em-dashes, and your devs have been using Cursor for years by now.

But, regardless if you explicitly stated how your people are allowed to use AI, AI taboo is very real. Someone you work with certainly isn't telling you how much they've outsourced to AI. This is Shadow IT. It’s the hidden habit. When people feel like they have to hide the tools that make their jobs easier, you don't just risk a hallucination in a client deliverable: you breed a culture of isolation.

This is the Past. Now, let's look at-

Card 2 (The Present): The Moon

The second card asks: What is the exact energy or reality of the situation right now?

Moon, huh? Big moods here.

When there's a vacuum of leadership, teams fill the silence with their worst fears. Right now, everyone is feeling existential dread about what this cultural supertanker called AI is going to do to them.

The complicated thing this card forces you to consider is even if you developed a governance strategy, a rollout plan, a career ladder, manager training, etc., all of that energy might not be quenching this dread. In fact, when individuals live in fear, every new enablement initiative is perceived as another nail in their professional coffins.

Thanks to Salesforce, Amazon, Block, and many other tech companies, career fear is on every headline. Your people (and probably you) are wondering, "Will I be replaced by AI?"

To that, the Moon says, "Do you trust your leadership, or do you trust the leadership that made the gutting decision to lay off 4,000 people last week? And the leaders of that other company who laid off 1,000 people two weeks ago? And the leaders in that other company that laid off half their workforce last month?"

There's one more card. Let's look ahead to-

Card 3 (The Future) - The Chariot

In a chronological spread, the third card is where this whole journey is heading. And right now, the future of AI belongs to The Chariot.

If you look closely at traditional tarot art, The Chariot is usually pulled by two beasts looking in opposite directions. This is your organization right now: you have the unbridled, chaotic excitement of your junior staff pulling one way, and the heavy, cautious anxiety of your senior leadership pulling the other.

If you don't take control, the cart just spins in circles or rips itself apart.

The Chariot represents unstoppable forward momentum, but only after the driver picks up the reins and aligns those opposing forces. Your job- whether you are officially a senior leader or you know who is- isn't to predict the future of the technology, but to grab the reins, get everyone pulling in the same direction, and steer these tools where you want them to go.

The organizations that figure out how to openly integrate AI into their daily workflows aren't just going to survive the next few years- they are going to blow past their competitors.

Your Fate, As Told By The Cards

To recap:

1. The Devil: People have been secretly adopting this new technology and feel shame.
2. The Moon: Everyone's anxious and they don't trust what they're being told.
3. The Chariot: Ripped in two or charging ahead of the competition is the choice YOU have to make.

You don't have to be a woo-woo person to believe this interpretation, but it's natural to ask, "So what should I do, Dan?"

A person of action. I like that.

You don't learn how to drive a high-performance vehicle by sitting in an empty room reading the manual. You learn by getting on the track and watching other drivers.

If you want to stop getting dragged around by the hype cycle and actually learn how to steer, come hang out with me at Show Me Something Cool With AI.

It’s a casual, open space to share the weird, wild, and incredibly useful workflows we're actually building right now. No doom-and-gloom, no jargon, no sales pitches- just practical show-and-tell to help you get your hands on the reins.

A TL;DR from the CRO

I bring a strong Hierophant energy to the household- walks occur precisely on schedule and treats are dispensed with regularity- and I expect total compliance

-Roman Noodles, Chief Ruff Officer

ROCK TUMBLING UPDATE

Last TL;DR I promised to share how cool a large piece of quartz gets after two months in Rock Hudson:

Cool, huh?

Rocks, man. They get harder every year.

May fortune smile upon your prompts,

Dan from Learn to Scale​

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​PS. Perhaps your next reading will involve some body swaps.​