Here's how I see it. I think ordinary people can take some time now to think through one question: in the age of AI, how can someone as ordinary as me make good use of the opportunities this era brings?
I think the first step is to understand the leverage involved.
I really like what Naval has shared about this. Creating media as an individual, for example, or building your own products. I think that's a very good way to approach it.
Then there's leverage through people, through organization. You can draw on other people's efforts. And there's capital. Capital is a form of power too.
Put simply, leverage is about drawing on resources beyond yourself.
And in the age of AI, I think one resource we can draw on is computing power.
The question now is: how do we unlock that computing power? How do we put it to use?
First, you can ask yourself this: if I'm a business owner today, what am I missing? Where am I getting stuck? Could AI help me with those things?
For example, let's say I'm a salesperson working on my own.
Could I use AI to help me run a Xiaohongshu account or a WeChat Channels account, create content about my area of expertise, and use that content to attract people and bring in sales leads?
Or, with approaches like email, could AI help me organize customer information and prepare content, helping me find more leads?
Some people might also think of mass outbound calling. Personally, I don't think that's very polite. But we can keep thinking: what other ways could we use AI to find leads?
In the past, doing all this might have meant having someone help you organize information, someone help you create content, and other people help with other tasks.
But as a salesperson working alone, you might not have those resources.
Now, you can try drawing on computing power to solve some of those problems.
So I think we can look at this in two parts: leverage through people's work, and leverage through intelligence.
How can we keep putting that leverage to use?
For example, there are plenty of areas you didn't understand or know much about before.
Take what people now call vibe coding. You may never have learned to code, but now you can use AI to try building a small tool you need.
Or perhaps you didn't know much about the law. If you ran into something like a labor arbitration case, you might not even have known where to begin.
Now, you can start by using AI to look up information and understand the process. You might realize: so this is how I can learn about it, and these are the things I need to prepare. Of course, you still need to verify the specific information.
So the more you use AI, the more you realize that it has done a lot to make knowledge and capabilities more accessible to everyone.
Some things used to be out of reach, or you felt you simply couldn't do them. Now you have a chance to learn about them, and even start doing them yourself.
I think those are some of the opportunities ordinary people can take advantage of.
Take the video I'm filming right now.
In the past, cutting and editing it myself would have taken a lot of time. There were also things I didn't know how to do.
Now that we have AI, it can help me with the text, subtitles, and editing.
When you watch me speak, there's no way I can really get through everything in a single take. There are plenty of pauses and places where I repeat myself.
But AI can help clean those up, so the finished video feels closer to a single take.
For me, that's one way I've actually been able to use this leverage.
So personally, I think this is a really good way to work.
You can also look at what you're doing right now. Where are you stuck? Where could you use another pair of hands? What don't you know how to do? Could you start by getting AI to help?
