Welcome back, lateral thinkers! It’s been a while. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’ve spent a lot of time hunkered down with work and exploring everything AI related.

Went down a very deep rabbit hole as I do tend to hyper-obsess. The good part, though, is that I have A LOT of thoughts and experiences to share.

As usual, they’ll be as contrarian, unconventional and, hopefully, lateral.

I am now sure lateral thinking will be one of the most important things of the next decade.

The way we’ll start these off moving forward is with 3 interesting reads:

• Your Brain on AI (TL;DR: A recent study reveals a 30% drop in human creative thinking over five years, linked to growing AI dependency. This cognitive decline underscores your argument that relying too much on AI’s “autocomplete” dulls original thought and that human imagination remains the ultimate creative advantage)

• Is AI Truly Creative? (TL;DR: New research from Aalto University and University of Helsinki shows that people’s perception of AI creativity depends heavily on how much of the creative process they witness, raising questions about how we judge creativity in both humans and machines.)

• AI Can’t Fix A Bad Idea (TL;DR: AI is great at remixing data, but human creativity is still the secret sauce. The article argues that intuition and empathy-two things AI can’t fake-are what make ideas stick, and why processes that blend AI’s data with human weirdness are the future of standout work)

Why will Lateral Thinking matter?

Well, because of AI. I won’t bore you with the basics, you all know AI is everywhere. You open your phone, there’s AI (unless it’s an iPhone, lmao). You write an email, there’s AI. You sneeze, ChatGPT says “Bless you.”.

There’s even AI in this text, because who in their right mind would spend time formatting text in 2025?

But here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: if we all use the same tools the same way, we all end up with the same results.

AI will be the great equalizer, but it’ll also be the great differentiator for some.

It’s not even garbage in, garbage out. It’s about the fact that too many people think AI is a chef instead of realizing it’s a blender.

That’s why we’re about to enter the golden age of meh (or mediocrity, if you’re being fancy).

You want to see what mediocrity looks like at scale? Just open social media and look at 9/10 “thought leadership” posts.

And that’s the best thing to happen to our generation. It means the only thing that actually matters now is what’s in your head before you touch the keyboard.

Your imagination. Your weird ideas.

And I don’t mean your r/showerthoughts doomscrolling. Your true original ideas.

If your input is boring, your output will be boring.

You can’t fix a bad prompt with more AI. If you ask for “10 ways to be productive,” you’ll get the same list as everyone else. But if you ask, “How would a German grandma improve productivity in a startup?”-now we’re talking. At least you’ll get something nobody else has.

Remember when your mom asked you “if all the other kids jump off a bridge, would you do it too?”. If you don’t, it might just be a Eastern European thing.

But my point is the reason I said no was because I thought I can find a much more creative way to do something dumb.

So, next time you’re about to use AI, ask yourself:

• What’s MY unique twist I can bring to this topic?

What’s worked for me so far is figuring out how I can make something pretty unhinged.

Because in the end, the only real “creative advantage” left is your imagination. Everything else is just autocomplete.

Stay weird. Or at least, stay different. The robots can handle the rest.