How many employees can I replace with AI?

Originally published by Bar Nakash on LinkedIn (July 15, as displayed in the source).

How many employees can I replace with AI?

This sentence is everywhere right now, and I get it. As a CEO one of the core responsibilities is making a company more profitable, and when a tool comes along that can do in minutes what used to take hours, the math is tempting.

I think we're asking the wrong question, it shouldn't be who can I replace with AI, but how can AI make the team I already have even better.

At Applift, every single person on the team uses AI daily, and we're not ashamed of it. It makes us faster, it spots mistakes we missed, it gives us ideas when the creative well runs dry, and it automates the repeating tasks that used to take an entire day out of our work week. I really can't remember how we used to work without it.

And still, our real achievements were made by our team. The pitch that won our biggest account this year, the insight that turned a struggling campaign into a case study, the call at 10pm on a Thursday because a client needed someone who actually understood their business. All of that was done by a person.

Every person at the Applift team was chosen because they're exceptional at what they do. AI is the best tool we've ever given them. But a tool doesn't think, and they do.

AI is the sharpest tool this industry has ever seen. But a tool without the right person behind it is just expensive software.

So when someone asks me how many employees I can replace with AI, I have an answer. None. I'd rather give exceptional people an unfair advantage than hand the work to a machine that doesn't know why it matters.