From Scarcity
to Abundance
In 1800, one hour of work bought you 10 minutes of candlelight. Today, that same hour buys 18,000 hours of light. We went from being light poor to having so much light you can see it from space.
AI is about to do the same thing for thinking. At the AITAI launch, we asked everyone in the room: what feels scarce in your work today? And what does abundance look like when AI removes that scarcity?
What the room revealed
25 people, one similar vision?!
Here's what I didn't expect. We had founders, professors, engineers, economists, students, and consultants in the room. You'd think you'd get a dozen different answers. You don't. When you lay the 25 responses side by side, the same word comes up again and again: time.
Not time in the abstract. A very specific kind of time: protected, uninterrupted time to think and to connect. A mining consultant wants more time for deep expertise. A finance intern is juggling university, work, and tutoring. A coordinator watches her creative work get squeezed out by the urgent. A professor spends his days being reactive instead of productive. Different people, different industries, different career stages. Same problem.
And underneath that, something even more interesting. A Dean wants meaningful time to connect with people on a personal level. A founder wants more time for the humans. A Director of Advancement has more relationships than she has attention to give them. People are time-poor, and connection-poor too. The immediate keeps drowning out the important, and the humans keep losing to the to-do list.
There's a third thread too. Several people named a scarcity of trusted signal: certainty, reliable insight, the knowledge locked inside failed experiments. Time, connection, signal. Three words for the same underlying problem. People are spending so much energy keeping up that there's nothing left for the work that matters. That's the scarcity AI is well-placed to fix.
Jeroen van Dalen, Founder & Director, AITAI
What feels scarce today
Five Themes of Scarcity
No time to think
The most common answer by far.
"Protected, high-quality time."
Emily Roper, Managing Director
"Time to reflect, to think and to be truly productive. Too much time spent being reactive."
Michael Small, Professor
"Time and thinking space — creative work squeezed by urgent and immediate."
Mariana Yavorska, Coordinator
No time for people
Relationships keep losing to the to-do list.
"Meaningful time to connect with others on a personal level, without depending only on technology to communicate."
Diego Rico, Dean of Culture and Community
"Time to connect with people, time to think deeply."
Jeroen, Founder of AITAI
"Time and attention — more good ideas and opportunities than there is capacity to pursue."
Rachel Dalton, Director of Advancement
Stuck on the surface
When did you last spend a whole day on one problem?
"Time to focus on one or two main things that have highest leverage."
Justin Strharsky, Head of Research
"The ability to analyse the problem, then break it down into smaller ones."
Scout Wu, Developer
"Ability to focus on one thing at a time and think deeply about it."
Darja Kragt, Director
Too much noise
More data than ever, less clarity about what any of it means.
"Access to insights with ease — can't scrape and model data all the time."
Leo Prendeville, Senior Economist
"Availability of data and results from experiments that did not reach their intended goal."
Gaganish, Junior Analyst
"Certainty. The pace of change means you're constantly making high-stakes decisions on shifting ground."
Nate Sturcke, Head of Impact
Not enough experts
The people who've done this before are spread across too many problems.
"People with deep operational experience combined with broad knowledge of energy systems and the physical world."
David Rose, Mining Consultant
"Skilled people in entrepreneurship."
Jasmin Ward, Program Lead
"Ability to influence the changes needed to create a better future for all Western Australians."
Hannah Fitzhardinge, Executive Director
The collective vision
You start your day and the noise is already gone. The data you need is there. The context behind that decision is clear. You're not catching up. You're not triaging your inbox. You're doing the actual work. The thinking, the creating, the work you came here to do.
And because you're not drowning in the urgent, you have time for the humans. Real conversations. Real mentoring. The relationships you keep meaning to invest in. The intern isn't burning out trying to keep up. She's exploring, experimenting, learning without the clock running out. The professor is being a professor again. The coordinator is doing work that actually changes communities, not filing reports about it.
25 people in one room described something very close to this, independently, without seeing each other's answers. The same shift that happened for light is starting to happen for thinking.
The visions
What Abundance Looks Like
Hover to see each person's own vision
Consulting & Professional Services
"When keeping up becomes effortless, you stop chasing the industry and start seeing where it's actually heading."
— Grant Coble-Neal, Consultant
Technology & Software
"When decomposing any problem takes minutes instead of days, no challenge is too complex to begin."
— Scout WU, Developer
Education & Research
"When busywork disappears, students stop consuming knowledge and start creating it — as a daily habit."
— Joshua Margono, Student
Consulting & Professional Services
"When AI handles the busywork, deep thinking stops being a rare luxury and becomes your daily standard."
— Darja Kragt, Director
Higher Education
"When attention becomes abundant, every relationship gets the care that only your best ten receive today."
— Rachel Dalton, Director of Advancement
Not-for-Profit
"When the data grunt work vanishes, every not-for-profit economist carries the firepower of an entire research bureau."
— Leo Prendeville, Senior Economist
Mining & Resources
"When every consultant carries a thousand operators' worth of hard-won experience, wisdom scales beyond any single lifetime."
— David Rose, Consultant
Not-for-Profit
"When AI handles the urgent, coordinators finally have space to do the work that actually changes communities."
— Mariana Yavorska, Coordinator
Education & Research
"When AI handles the busywork, every semester becomes a deeper floor in the same building of understanding."
— Jonathan Abraham, Student
Education & Research
"When entrepreneurship expertise becomes as abundant as light, every willing founder gets a mentor who never sleeps."
— Jasmin Ward, Program Lead
Technology & Software
"When exploring a decision costs almost nothing, confidence moves at the speed of change."
— Nate Sturcke, Head of Impact
Education & Research
"When AI carries the administrative weight, every hour you reclaim becomes a human conversation that changes someone's day."
— Diego Rico, Dean of Culture and Community
Education & Research
"When expertise is everywhere, leadership shifts from finding rare talent to unleashing the talent you already have."
— Lisa Longman, Director
Consulting & Professional Services
"When AI handles the preparation and the follow-through, every hour becomes your best hour."
— Emily Roper, Managing Director
Finance & Banking
"When AI carries the busywork, a 24-hour day finally feels like enough."
— Jordan Aung, Economic Analyst Intern
Technology & Software
"When failed experiments become as visible as successes, every analyst finally sees the whole truth."
— Gaganish, Junior Economic Data Analyst
Technology & Software
"When the grunt work vanishes, every data analyst becomes the strategic thinker they were always meant to be."
— Mira Zhol, Data Analyst
Education & Research
"When compute is abundant and compliance runs itself, lecturers return to what matters — curiosity, discovery, and students."
— Jordan Hill, Lecturer
Consulting & Professional Services
"When evidence flows as freely as light, influence shifts from persuasion to shared sight — and better futures get built together."
— Hannah Fitzhardinge, Executive Director
Finance & Banking
"When learning costs nothing, the Chief Engineer stops catching up and starts seeing around corners."
— Aidan Morgan, Chief Engineer
Education & Research
"When AI handles the reactive noise, professors finally get to be professors again."
— Michael Small, Director/Professor
Construction & Infrastructure
"When AI handles the planning grind, you finally have time to lead the build."
— Frik Jankowitz, Project Manager
Technology & Software
"When AI handles the busywork of research, your scarcest resource — deep focused thought — becomes your default mode."
— Justin Strharsky, Head of Research
Education & Research
"When AI handles the finding and the filling, you finally have time for the work that actually matters."
— Lisa Longman, Director
Technology & Software
"When AI carries the cognitive load, the founder's scarcest resource — genuine human presence — becomes their most abundant."
— Jeroen, Founder of AITAI
What does abundance look like in your world?
Create your own vision and see what AI imagines for your industry.