It’s time to think right-to-left

AI’s takeover timeline: from $1B one-human firms to mass layoffs — and the industries racing to adapt or collapse.

Author

Malcolm Frank, CEO
May 26, 2025

 

It’s time to think right-to-left

Most of us are trained to think left-to-right. Start with what you know—how your business works today, how it worked yesterday—and draw a thoughtful, considered line into tomorrow. That kind of thinking has served us well for ages, and is the fundamental assumption of almost all MBA case studies ever written.

But this isn’t that kind of moment.

AI isn’t a faster horse. It’s not even a car. It’s the invention of flight—while most of us are still widening the roads.

Models like OpenAI’s o3, Deepseek, and Claude 4 aren’t just improving—they’re leapfrogging each other up an exponential curve. Meanwhile, AI agents—digital workers in everything but name—are pouring into the market, radically expanding the scale and scope of what a single person can achieve. We’ve now reached the point where a once-hypothetical question is being asked in earnest: Which one-person company will become the next unicorn?

And yet, in executive suites, too many keep asking “How do we plug AI into our current model?” Wrong question. That’s the kind of thinking that lands you in the Blockbuster Hall of Fame.

Instead, here’s the better question: It’s 2030. AI is everywhere. What does a fully AI-native insurance company look like? A management consultancy staffed mostly by machines?

Said differently, think AI-first and then work backwards.

Because the path forward now runs in reverse. Right to left. From the future, back to today.

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And one more thing…

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Why does AI keep going there?

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