It feels impossible these days not to have AI on the brain.

Truthfully, although I use it regularly outside of work, I’ve been hesitant to embrace it at work.

When you work in tech — especially cloud and AI — you’re surrounded by conversations about it all day, every day. And if I’m honest, I’ve felt a little apprehensive.

Part of that is personal.

I keep wondering what all of this means for the next generation.

More specifically, how does my daughter — a first-year college student — and her peers differentiate themselves in those first jobs out of college when so much is changing so quickly?

I think that’s a very real concern many of us are quietly carrying right now.

Then something interesting happened.

AWS recently released a new AI tool called Quick, and one day it simply appeared on my desktop.

I stared at it for a while: curious and a bit skeptical.

Then I took my colleague Manish Patel up on his offer to walk me through it.

And honestly… it was pretty impressive.

Even someone like me – who doesn’t naturally gravitate toward new systems – was able to build a simple “Chief of Staff” assistant that surfaces key business updates, flags emails and Slack messages needing responses, and highlights the things most likely to fall through the cracks.

What’s surprising me most is that the value isn’t really speed or efficiency.

It’s the space it frees up for other things.

To be clear, I don’t want to dismiss the very real conversations and concerns about how AI is changing the way we work and live.

But my new “Chief of Staff” saves me a few minutes every day,  and lately, a few extra minutes feels like a gift.

What do you think?  What if AI isn’t replacing us, but revealing what we value most?