Human First AI Is a Decision Not a Vibe

Most of the conversation about AI is happening at two extremes. Founders bragging publicly about the payroll they cut, and founders refusing to touch any of it. Both are missing the point, and neither one leaves you with an answer you can actually run a business on.

So I spent six months deep diving into AI so I could form my own thoughts. Three programs, an intensive, and a lot of building. Not reading about it. Not collecting other people’s opinions. Actually using it inside this business until I had a aligned AI position I would be willing to defend out loud.

This is the first episode of Human First: The AI Series for High-Trust Businesses, and I am starting where I always start, which is values. I go into what I am genuinely worried about, and that list is long. There are parts of this business I will never hand over, and I name every one of them. Then I get to the question almost nobody is asking alongside me, which is not whether you should use AI but who gets the upside when you do.

I also published our full AI policy this week and added an AI statement to our values page. Nobody expects a business my size to do that. I did it anyway, and I will tell you exactly why.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why the two loudest positions on AI are both wrong, and where I landed after six months of building with it instead of arguing about it
• The moment two different AI models answered the exact same question about my anxiety medication in two completely different ways, and what that difference actually proves
• What I am genuinely worried about, including the data centers going up around me in Virginia and the conversation my own kids are already living through
• The question I asked my cousin about how AI was being rolled out at her company that nobody in the room had an answer for
• Why a deliverable that used to be a $10,000 engagement is now built into my client work, and the decision I made about the savings
• The one filter I used to decide who to learn from, and the three people who passed it
• What I will never automate in this business, and why I want you to write your own version of that list this week

Key Concepts from the Episode

Consider the Source. My parents’ rule for who to take advice from, applied to a technology conversation full of people whose proudest result is a spreadsheet with fewer humans on it. I went looking for teachers who were talking about impact instead of headcount reduction.

If somebody’s biggest flex is the thing that turns your stomach, they are not your teacher.

Sitting Out Is Not the Neutral Position. Abstaining from AI does not protect you from what AI does to your industry. It only removes you from the rooms where it is getting built, priced, and regulated.

Opting out does not stop the thing from being built. It just guarantees you were not in the room when it was.

Whoever Builds It Decides Who It Works For. Safiya Noble made this argument about search engines in 2018 and it lands harder now. The results a system hands back are shaped by who built it and what they were optimizing for.

The two models did not disagree by accident. Somebody sat in a room and decided where the line was.

Who Gets the Upside. Productivity has been climbing for a century while wages sat still. AI can widen that gap faster than anything before it, or it can close it, and that is a choice each of us makes inside our own business.

If AI made you more profitable and nobody else in the business felt it, that is not efficiency. That is the old model with better tools.

Going Beige. Dabbling is the worst available position. Half-using AI is how a business built on relationships ends up sounding exactly like every other business in its category.

The people who barely touch it are the ones who will sound the most like everyone else.

Want to Learn AI From the Same Program I Did?

Callan Faulkner’s AI Employee Bootcamp is where I built the AI infrastructure now running behind my marketing, my client delivery, my finance reporting, and the tech stack that holds it all together. I came in with the systems and SOPs I had already built through my 90 Day CEO Operating System®, and we built the automation layer on top of them. I am going through it again because there is still more I want to implement.

Register through my affiliate link and you get a bonus bootcamp debrief group call with me, to translate what Callan teaches into a high-trust, relationship-based business. That translation is the part most AI training skips entirely. 

Register for the bootcamp through my affiliate link.

I earn a commission when you register through that link. I was sending people to Callan long before there was a commission attached, and I am currently a student in her program.

Resources Mentioned

Our AI Use Statement. Exactly which tools we use, what happens to the call recordings inside my programs, and what we will never do with your information. Specific enough that you can hold me to it. 

Our Values. Human first, always, plus the rest of what this business stands on. 

Staying Focused is Your Political Resistance Right Now. The episode where I made the case that your business is your political resistance. 

AI Business Lab. Michael Hyatt’s program, where I first saw what AI could do to a workflow. 

Codified in the City. Maria-Ines Fuenmayor, who built the dashboard that pulled my reporting out of five different places and into one. 

Rachel Rodgers on Substack. Her writing on why opting out does not protect you is where a lot of my thinking landed. 

Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble. The 2018 book about search engines that explains most of what is happening with AI right now. 

Connect with Me:

• Instagram: @racheal.cook
• TikTok: @rachealcookmba
• LinkedIn: @rachealcook
• YouTube: @the_ceo_collective
• Website: The CEO Collective

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