From the Desk

One track is growing twice as fast and paying 42% more. The other is stagnating. That's not a prediction — it's already in the data, from PwC's analysis of over one billion job listings published this week.

The difference has nothing to do with whether your job involves AI. Both tracks use AI. The difference is what kind of work you do when AI handles everything else.

This week: the full breakdown of both tracks and what determines which one you're on, why half of Americans are now using AI chatbots but most still don't trust what they produce, and what changed this week for every business with a digital presence.

02 · Try This Today

The PwC two-track finding is useful as data. It's more useful as a personal diagnostic. This prompt turns it into one. Takes under 15 minutes.

A clear view of where your time is going and what each category of work is worth as AI improves — and a short list of changes that compound over the next quarter.

03 · Deep Dive

The 62% wage premium doesn't go to everyone who uses AI. It goes to people whose work shifted in a specific direction — and the direction matters more than the volume of AI use.

Democratised roles use AI to produce more of the same work faster. Five reports a week becomes fifteen. Output scales. The judgment required stays the same or decreases. Over time, the role becomes easier for anyone to perform — and the market prices it accordingly.

Professionalised roles use AI to stop doing the tasks that didn't require real judgment in the first place. The freed-up time goes toward client decisions, pattern recognition, domain-specific calls, and expertise that accumulates over years and doesn't transfer to a tool.

The practical test: when you use AI in your work, what happens to the time it frees up? More volume of the same type of work is one signal. Decisions and conversations you previously couldn't make time for is another.

PwC's Global Chief AI Officer put it this way: "Companies seeing the greatest AI returns amplify human expertise to accelerate innovation." AI as a multiplier of judgment produces one outcome. AI as a replacement for judgment produces another. Both feel like productivity. Only one compounds over time.

04 · Tool Spotlight

The AI that gives you sourced answers instead of search results.

You type a question — about your industry, a competitor, a regulatory change, a market trend — and Perplexity gives you a direct answer with citations you can click through and verify. Not ten links to scroll through. One answer, grounded in recent sources.

The workflow: instead of spending 20 minutes reading three articles to extract one insight, you ask the question directly, read the answer in two minutes, and click through to the one or two sources worth reading in full. It doesn't replace careful reading. It decides which careful reading is worth your time.

One non-obvious use: treat it as a weekly briefing system. Every Monday morning, ask it "What happened in [your industry] this week that I should know about?" Done consistently, it replaces about an hour of scattered reading with ten minutes of targeted catch-up — and the citations mean you can verify anything before you act on it.

05 · What We're Building

Fifteen operators, founders, and consultants. In Austin. Three deployed AI products each, built around their actual businesses, not classroom exercises.

The PwC data describes two tracks. Cohort 1 is for people who have decided which one they want to be on.

At our Demo Night last Tuesday, I walked through the PR outreach system I built for MakerSquare — a tool that scans the news each morning, finds the journalists who wrote relevant stories, drafts custom pitches, sources their emails, sends from my Gmail, and follows up automatically if there's no reply. I built it in a week. No engineering background. It runs every morning without me touching it. That's the kind of thing two weeks produces — not a prototype you shelve, but something already working.

No coding background required. July 6.

Forward it to a founder or operator who needs the signal without the noise.

Free · Every Tuesday · makersquare.ai

AI Builder Program · Austin, Texas