Satya Nadella runs a company that put $13 billion into OpenAI and spent another $80 billion on AI infrastructure this year.
Last week he said the biggest obstacle to AI isn’t the technology.
It’s convincing people to change how they work.
Let that sit for a moment.
You have built the most powerful productivity technology in human history.
You have spent nearly $100 billion in a single year. And your biggest problem is that people won’t use it.
So let me translate.
“Changing how you work” sounds like a training course. A mindset shift. A bit of digital upskilling.
It isn’t.
What it actually means, when the new way of working involves AI doing 80% of the task, is this. You are not adapting. You are onboarding your replacement. You are documenting your expertise, your judgement, your shortcuts, your institutional knowledge. And you are feeding it, systematically, into a system that costs $30 a month.
Your manager will notice.
Because your manager is also being told to change how they work.
This is not a criticism of Nadella. It may be the most honest thing a tech CEO has said in years.
But honesty and comfort are different things.
We are not being asked to embrace the future.
We are being asked to make it easier to replace us.
The least we can do is understand that before we click accept. This is post 1, there’s more…