The AI Collaboration Lie

"Don't compete with AI, collaborate with it." That's the new career gospel. Sounds sensible. Sounds balanced. Sounds like complete bollocks.

Here's what's really happening: we're calling ourselves AI collaborators while becoming AI assistants. We prompt, it delivers. We review, it improves. That's not collaboration. That's middle management for machines.

The Skills Theater

The training industry has pivoted beautifully. Yesterday they sold Excel mastery, today it's "prompt engineering." Same circus, new tent.

We're optimizing the buggy whip while the car sits in the garage.

The Real Question

Instead of "How do I collaborate with AI?" ask "What work should humans stop doing entirely?"

Not because AI does it better, but because doing it at all might be waste.

Those hours freed by AI don't vanish into cost savings. They become white space for building deeper relationships, exploring ideas, questioning assumptions. Instead, most professionals fill that space with more of the same work, now AI-assisted.

The opportunity isn't collaboration. It's subtraction.

What Actually Works

Stop optimizing existing work. Question whether the work should exist. AI doesn't free you to do more of the same. It frees you to do something completely different.

Build capabilities that don't require AI partnership. Not because AI can't help, but because dependency on any external system creates vulnerability.

The collaboration phase is temporary. What you build during it determines whether you emerge stronger or dependent.

The question isn't how well you can work with AI. It's how well you can work without needing to.