AI is the New Baseline

A leaked internal memo from Shopify’s CEO Tobi is making waves. His message is blunt: AI literacy isn’t optional—it’s a fundamental expectation for every employee.

Change happens fast—yesterday’s futuristic concepts are today’s baseline. AI proficiency is quickly becoming the new coding literacy—if it hasn’t already. Understanding how to effectively prompt, contextualize, prototype, and evaluate AI outputs isn’t just beneficial; it’s required.

It’s intriguing that teams are encouraged to see autonomous AI agents as teammates, rather than defaulting to hiring more people. Scale a team’s impact without proportionally increasing their size—seems like a win to me.

Obviously this natural tension here—between AI’s efficiency and the potential loss of human insight—is worth a deeper think. How would your team leverage autonomous AI teammates alongside human talent? At Automattic, we’re experimenting on this front; a subtle shift, for now, but the concepts are there—and worth doubling down on.

More than ever, being good at your job means being good at learning. The most important skill in the age of AI isn’t coding, prompting, or any technical proficiency; it’s adaptability.

AI won’t replace our creativity, empathy, or taste—but it can amplify them. The real question isn’t whether we’ll adopt AI, but whether we’ll adapt quickly enough.

Will you resist this change, or embrace it?