A blue genie granting you three wishes.
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I bet every data scientist, sports analyst, and quant has one shared epiphany they never talk about. They probably all started the same way too, by learning how to program and how to access databases. Then, they began making dashboards and reports for the big cheeses, the people who actually made the decisions. At some point, I bet they all had a moment when they looked over the C-suite and thought: that’s where I need to be.
The problem is, Jafar had the exact same epiphany. Disney’s Aladdin came out 34 years ago so if you saw it as a kid, you’ve probably rewatched it with your own kids, and you may have lived out the same story arc as Jafar, the Royal Vizier of Agrabah, the man behind the scenes who thought he was the one doing all the work and receiving none of the credit.
Jafar’s First Wish
His first wish, like every analytics person, is to become Sultan.
We are the ones with the data, the models, the insights, the forecasts. Why are we wasting them on people who don’t appreciate them? Put us in charge.
Jafar gets his wish. And it lasts for about sixty seconds of screen time.
Every maker-turned-manager discovers the same emptiness. It feels fun at first but you miss your ability to build. Michael Jordan felt it so much as president of basketball operations of the Washington Wizards that he un-retired to play again.
Jafar figures it out fast.
Jafar’s Second Wish
His second wish is smarter. No fancy title or responsibilities. He just wants to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world.
That’s when the data scientist starts to go deep on tools. We want to leverage our skills and expertise because that’s where the real fulfillment and joy comes from.
Jafar in this form is terrifying precisely because he is still Jafar. The same domain knowledge, political instincts, institutional memory, goals, and objectives, now turbo-charged with raw technical power.
This is the analyst who has covered consumer cyclicals for fifteen years and can rattle off insights and examples from a decade ago as easily as a week ago. This is the quant who recognizes an error in a new model because he made the same mistake once twenty years ago. The sports numbers guy who regrets every wrong draft pick and has the ghosts of his mistakes following him everywhere, making his new choices that much better.
Does Jafar stop there? Do we?
There comes a time when the young bloods start to outcompete you, even in all your glory. Kevin McHale, the legendary Celtic, reflected on his late career.
“I’m matching up with players who are nothing special and they don’t even see me,” McHale said. “They are scoring over me like I’m not even there. After one particularly rough night, I remember I went home and cried. I cried over the loss of that part of me that had been with me since I was 13 years old.”
Kevin McHale, to Jackie MacMullan, 2012. https://www.espn.com/boston/nba/story/_/id/7662366
If he had a lamp, he would have reached for it.
Jafar’s Third Wish
“The Genie has more power than you’ll ever have!” Aladdin taunts him. “Face it, Jafar. You’re still just second best.”
Jafar takes the bait. He wishes to be an all-powerful genie. And then, he’s trapped. Phenomenal cosmic powers—itty bitty living space.
For us, that wish is AI. A system that builds models, analyzes data, codes, and deploys better, faster, and more reliably than you ever did yourself. And with better use of em dashes.
So what will happen when everyone has, or is, a genie?
The Incredible Shrinking Labor Force
Will we all be booted to the cave of wonders? Or weep as we watch our wages drop?
We worry about a future where we are replaced by younger, smarter, tougher competitors. They do not sleep, they do not get sick, and they multiply faster than bunnies. The answer likely isn’t to outcompete them. The answer, and the lesson, is to be Aladdin, not Jafar. Use the AI, do not become the AI.
It’s such a joy to direct a handful of AI agents working on various different projects. Perhaps the future will be less about a world where employees have one employer and more about a world where humans work with dozens of AI agents, adding value to hundreds of companies at once. The gig economy on steroids.
What Should We Wish For?
I have more than ten genies now. I use them every day. I love what they let me build, how fast they let me think, how many problems I can juggle. I’m not going back. Nobody is.
But I can feel the sorcerer in me napping. I reach for a concept I used to hold in my head and I can’t find it. It lives in the machine. I notice it the way you notice a muscle you haven’t used in months. Oh, that’s interesting.
Should we fear this improvement?
People have feared progress since before we could spell it, since before we had a word for it. But progress means we are all doing better.
Imagine if everyone on earth were suddenly and magically ten times more productive. At first, that sounds great. But wait, you say. Ninety percent of us will lose our jobs. Companies will be temporarily pleased, but the economy will collapse: the unemployed do not consume.
But that is silly. By that logic, the economy would boom if everyone on earth were suddenly and tragically ten times less productive. If you could wish for an order of magnitude change in everyone’s productivity, would it be to go up, or down?
AIs are tools that enhance human productivity, perhaps even more than 10x. And they need us as much as we need them. At least for now, and probably for the foreseeable future.
But perhaps at some point, they will become as human as we are, and then we will need to do the right thing, the moral thing, the Aladdin thing.
We’ll need to wish for them to be free.