You know the type. The person who never spoke up in meetings unless it was to deflect blame. The one who rode other people's work, avoided accountability, and contributed just enough to stay employed. The person who never visited a customer, never deep-dove into the business problem, never made the hard call, and never sounded stupid in a room because they never said anything worth critiquing.
Now that same person is showing up with polished answers, structured arguments, and articulate explanations that sound like they spent the last five years learning what you actually spent the last five years learning.
Your first reaction is probably right. It is AI.
But your second reaction, the one where you dismiss them and write it off as fake capability, is wrong. And if you stay stuck in that dismissal, you are going to lose ground fast.
AI Is Raising the Floor for Everyone
AI is not making bad employees good. It is making incapable employees capable enough to participate. That is a meaningful difference, and it matters more than you think.
Seth Godin has been saying for years that the internet rewards people who show up with something to say. In his post on AI and writing, he points out that AI is not a replacement for original thinking. It is a tool that makes it easier to structure, refine, and communicate ideas. The problem is not the tool. The problem is whether people are using the tool to think better or to avoid thinking altogether.
The employee who was always lazy is now using AI to look less lazy. They are using it to draft emails, structure reports, pull together research, and sound more coherent in meetings. They are not suddenly smarter. They are just no longer penalized as heavily for being intellectually slow or operationally sloppy.
And here is the part that frustrates high performers: that leveling effect feels unfair.
You spent years building expertise. You made mistakes in front of customers. You carried the pressure of being wrong in real time. You developed judgment through repetition, failure, and accountability. Now someone who skipped all of that work is showing up with AI-generated confidence, and it feels like they are getting credit they did not earn.
But the frustration is misplaced. The real question is not whether AI is helping them. The real question is whether AI is helping you even more.
If AI Is Helping Them, It Should Be Helping You More
Alex Hormozi talks constantly about leverage. In his content on productivity and systems, he frames business growth as a function of how much output you can create per unit of input. AI is one of the highest-leverage tools available right now because it compresses time, removes friction, and eliminates low-value work.
If the person who used to contribute nothing is now contributing something because of AI, that is a net positive for the business. They are less of a drag. They are causing fewer problems. They are creating less political noise. You are spending less time cleaning up after them or compensating for their gaps.
That frees you up to operate at a higher level. But only if you are actually using AI to operate at a higher level.
If you are using AI the same way they are, to make your existing work slightly faster, you are not widening the gap. You are just running in place while they close the distance. And that is the real risk.
The mediocre employee is using AI to get to baseline capability. You should be using AI to get so far ahead of baseline that the gap becomes impossible to close.
The Difference Between AI as a Crutch and AI as a Lever
There is a meaningful distinction between using AI to cover for weakness and using AI to amplify strength.
The weak performer uses AI to avoid thinking. They use it to generate answers they do not understand, structure arguments they cannot defend, and create work they could not replicate without the tool. They are not learning. They are borrowing.
Gary Vaynerchuk has talked repeatedly about the difference between people who use tools to avoid hard work and people who use tools to do more hard work faster. In his content on AI and productivity, he frames AI as an accelerant, not a replacement. The people who win with AI are the ones who were already moving fast. AI just lets them move faster.
The high performer uses AI differently. They use it to eliminate the work that does not require their judgment. They use it to build better systems, identify patterns faster, structure their thinking more clearly, and operate at a higher strategic altitude. They are not using AI to fake expertise. They are using AI to free up the space where their actual expertise creates the most value.
That is the gap. And if you are not intentionally using AI to widen that gap, you are letting it close by default.
The Real Threat Is Not That They Look Smarter. It Is That You Are Standing Still.
The frustration you feel when the lazy employee shows up with an AI-generated answer is not about them. It is about you.
It is about the fact that you know they did not earn it. You know they are using a shortcut. You know their understanding is surface-level. And you are right.
But none of that matters if you are not using the same tools to get further ahead.
If AI is helping them get to 60 percent capability and you are sitting at 80 percent without using AI, the gap is closing. If AI helps you get to 95 percent while they are at 60 percent, the gap is widening. The tool is neutral. The outcome depends on who is using it with more intention.
The business does not care whether someone earned their capability the hard way or borrowed it from a machine. The business cares whether the work is getting done, whether decisions are getting made, and whether the output is creating value.
If the previously useless employee is now contributing because AI gave them structure, that is good for the business. If you are stuck resenting that fact instead of using AI to become 10 times more effective than they could ever be, that is a you problem.
What High Performers Should Be Doing With AI
If you are the person who actually knows what you are doing, AI should be helping you operate at a completely different level than the person who is just using it to look competent.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
- Use AI to eliminate low-value work: If you are still writing basic emails, pulling together standard reports, summarizing meeting notes, or doing other work that does not require your judgment, you are wasting leverage. AI can handle that work in seconds. Free yourself up to do the work only you can do.
- Use AI to build better systems: High performers do not just execute tasks. They build the operating logic that makes execution repeatable. Use AI to document processes, create frameworks, structure decision trees, and turn your expertise into systems other people can follow. That is how you scale your impact without scaling your time.
- Use AI to see patterns faster: AI can process more information than you can manually review. Use it to identify trends, surface insights, flag risks, and give you a clearer view of what is actually happening in the business. The faster you can see the pattern, the faster you can make the call.
- Use AI to operate at a higher strategic level: If AI is handling the execution work, you should be spending more time on strategy, positioning, market movement, and business logic. The person using AI to fake their way through a meeting is still operating tactically. You should be operating at the level where tactics are decided.
- Use AI to test your own thinking: One of the best uses of AI is as a sparring partner. Use it to challenge your assumptions, stress-test your logic, identify gaps in your argument, and refine your point of view. The weak performer uses AI to avoid thinking. You should use AI to think better.
If you are doing those things, the gap between you and the person borrowing AI-generated competence is not closing. It is widening. And that is what matters.
The Business Wins When Everyone Gets Better.
The frustration about AI leveling the playing field misses the bigger point. The business does not need everyone to stay at their current level. The business needs everyone to get better.
If AI helps the weak performer become less of a drag, that is a win. If it helps the strong performer become exponentially more effective, that is a bigger win. The business benefits from both.
The problem is not that AI is helping people who do not deserve it. The problem is when high performers refuse to use AI because they think they are above it, or because they resent the fact that weaker people are using it to catch up.
That resentment is a trap. It keeps you focused on other people instead of focused on your own leverage. And while you are sitting there annoyed that someone else is using AI to sound smarter, they are closing the gap and you are standing still.
So What Does This Mean?
AI is raising the floor. It is making it easier for weak performers to look capable. That is not a threat. That is the new baseline.
The real question is whether you are using AI to raise the ceiling.
If you are using AI the same way a mediocre employee is using it, to make your existing work slightly faster, you are not winning. You are just keeping pace.
If you are using AI to eliminate the work that does not require your judgment, build better systems, operate at a higher strategic level, and widen the gap between your capability and everyone else's, you are winning.
The businesses that figure this out first will have a massive advantage. The leaders who figure this out first will be untouchable.
The ones who sit there frustrated that AI is helping people they do not respect will get left behind.
AI is not the problem. Standing still is the problem.
If you want help building the systems, clarity, and operating discipline that let you use AI to widen the gap instead of just keeping pace, start with the 15-Min Marketing Freedom Audit. It will show you where the real leverage is.