The AI skills gap is widening. But you still have time.

There’s a pattern I keep seeing, and it’s accelerating. On one side, professionals who are gaining momentum every month: experimenting, building, compounding their edge. On the other, those who are still waiting: for a better tool, clearer guidance, the right moment to start.

The gap is widening fast.

Not long ago, I received a message from someone who had attended one of my events. It started with: “I didn’t enjoy yesterday much…” and continued: “If the goal was to make me feel like a prehistoric frog, mission accomplished. I enjoy your talks, but saying you’d fire 80% of managers and that everyone needs at least 1 of 5 skills feels like brutal pressure.”

That hit me, because that wasn’t my intention. But then I realised: the message itself confirms exactly what I’d been talking about. A lot of people genuinely don’t see how serious the situation is. And if having one out of five skills feels like brutal pressure? That says everything.

As one of my colleagues put it:

“The scissors keep opening wider and wider. Every day I see people who are at the beginning of the AI skills spectrum and are absolutely lost. Those on the right are gaining enormous speed.”

Why so many people still aren’t moving

They’re staying in familiar routines. Not investing time in their development. Not getting serious about AI tools. Waiting for the version that does everything on its own.

And yet, most of them don’t realise how fast things are actually moving, not out of laziness, but because exponential change is genuinely hard for the human brain to grasp.

Julian Schrittwieser described it well: people notice that AI can already write code and design websites, but still makes mistakes or goes off track. And somehow they conclude that AI will never perform these tasks at human level.

That’s the trap. Top models will be capable of working autonomously for up to 8 hours a day by mid-next year. And by the end of 2027, they will outperform most human experts across a wide range of domains.

This isn’t dystopian fiction. It’s a plausible trajectory, and one worth preparing for now.

Three reasons not to panic

Before the pressure sets in, here’s the honest context.

First, we’re still early. If you feel like you’re slightly behind, that’s completely fine. The window is still open.

Second, not everyone needs to become an AI specialist. Most professionals need a solid working understanding of AI, enough to apply it to management, planning, decision-making, and whatever they’re already good at. Ambition and curiosity matter more than technical depth.

Third, the barriers are low. The best AI tools cost roughly the same as a few coffees a month. A significant amount of high-quality educational content is free. The only thing genuinely required is the decision to start.

So where does it actually break down?

Right there, at the last point. Because even with minimal financial cost, real AI adoption requires two things: time and courage.

Time to experiment, to fail at things, and to try again. Courage to engage with tools and tasks that feel uncomfortable.

Seth Godin put it clearly: it’s easy to say we don’t have time for new skills. But the truth is, we’d probably find the time. What we don’t have is the energy or the motivation. Find that, and the time follows.

How to actually move forward

Invest in yourself. Get access to the best tools available, such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and commit to using them properly for at least a couple of months. The return on that investment can be career-defining.

Find your motivation. Connect AI to something you’re already good at and want to do better. A manager who sees AI as a tool for sharper decisions will have a significant edge. So will the teacher, architect, or entrepreneur who weaves it into their existing expertise.

Work deeply. Email summaries and quick translations are fine, but they won’t move the needle much. Try building something genuinely ambitious with AI: a new project, a presentation, a website. That’s where the real learning happens.

Find a mentor. Identify someone who works well with AI, show them exactly what you’re doing, and ask them to show you how they’d approach it differently. This kind of hands-on exposure is hard to replicate any other way.

Write to me. Still not sure where to start? Write to me. I mean it. I’ll reply to everyone and point you in the right direction. Let’s see how many of you take the leap. 🙂

Why it’s worth the discomfort

Some people may get by without AI. But anyone who wants to do exceptional work is going to need to be genuinely good at what they do, and AI is one of the most powerful ways to get there. Not as a replacement for your skills. As an amplifier of them.

Think of it less as a productivity tool and more as a way to become better at what already matters to you:

A better manager. A better teacher. A better architect. A better parent.

The gap is widening. But you’re still in time to end up on the right side of it.

FD