Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is not just anoth­er wave of automa­tion. It is not anoth­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty tool. And it is not mere­ly the next phase of dig­i­tal transformation.

Accord­ing to Rishad Tobac­cow­ala, who pre­sent­ed at the recent Next Gen­er­a­tion SAP Enter­prise Archi­tect Learn­ing Forum at SAP head­quar­ters in New­town Square, Penn­syl­va­nia, it is some­thing far more profound.

“I believe, with every­thing we already know, AI is still under­hyped,” said Tobac­cow­ala, an author, speak­er, teacher and advi­sor with four decades of expe­ri­ence help­ing peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions rein­vent themselves. 

That’s a strik­ing claim in a world sat­u­rat­ed with AI head­lines, mar­ket volatil­i­ty, and bold pre­dic­tions. Yet Tobac­cow­ala argued that most lead­ers still fail to grasp the true scale of change under­way. To explain why, he first reflect­ed back on 2019.

A Pre­scient Warning

When Tobac­cow­ala wrote his first book, Restor­ing the Soul of Busi­ness (which was pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2020, just before the pan­dem­ic), its sub­ti­tle cen­tered on ​“stay­ing human in the age of data.” The orig­i­nal work­ing title, he notes, was The Sto­ry of the Spread­sheet. His pub­lish­er, Harper­Collins, ulti­mate­ly went in a dif­fer­ent direction.

What’s notable is not just the book’s suc­cess, but its tim­ing. Released more than two years before the launch of Chat­G­PT 3.5, the final chap­ter already addressed AI. As gen­er­a­tive AI entered main­stream con­scious­ness, read­ers began inter­pret­ing the sub­ti­tle dif­fer­ent­ly — as being not mere­ly about data, but about stay­ing human in the age of AI.

Today, Tobaccowala’s the­sis has sharp­ened: this is not incre­men­tal change. What AI is bring­ing about is structural.

AI Is Not an Extension

Every major tech­nol­o­gy in his­to­ry has extend­ed human capa­bil­i­ty. Fire extend­ed phys­i­cal pow­er. The print­ing press extend­ed knowl­edge dis­tri­b­u­tion. The inter­net scaled infor­ma­tion shar­ing glob­al­ly. Social media turned indi­vid­u­als into publishers.

“All tech­nol­o­gy up to now has extend­ed the human brain,” Tobac­cow­ala explained. ​“My basic belief is AI cre­ates a new brain. It’s not about extend­ing our brain. It’s a new brain.”

Pre­vi­ous tech­nolo­gies ampli­fied human cog­ni­tion. AI intro­duces a par­al­lel form of cog­ni­tion, he told atten­dees at the event, that oper­ates inde­pen­dent­ly and at speeds beyond human com­pre­hen­sion.  The impli­ca­tions of this are eco­nom­ic and philosophical.

“All pre­vi­ous tech­nolo­gies enhanced and made valu­able knowl­edge,” he said. ​“I believe AI will make knowl­edge com­plete­ly free and not mon­e­ti­z­able. And all of us are knowl­edge workers.”

The Speed Problem

The veloc­i­ty of AI devel­op­ment com­pounds its dis­rup­tion. Dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing, Tobac­cow­ala not­ed, took rough­ly 30 years to become the major­i­ty of glob­al adver­tis­ing spend. Moore’s Law pre­dict­ed com­put­ing pow­er would dou­ble rough­ly every 18 months.

When his sec­ond book was pub­lished just a year ago, AI capa­bil­i­ty was dou­bling every 11 months. Now, he says that agen­tic AI capa­bil­i­ty is dou­bling every sev­en weeks.

“This is the first time that you have a tech­nol­o­gy that is out­strip­ping human and orga­ni­za­tion­al abil­i­ty to keep up,” he said. ​“If any­body basi­cal­ly says, ​‘I believe this is what’s going to hap­pen,’ take it with a grain of salt.”

From Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Alien Intelligence

At one point in his pre­sen­ta­tion, Tobac­cow­ala delib­er­ate­ly reframed the ter­mi­nol­o­gy, refer­ring to AI as ​“alien intelligence.”

“The top three rea­sons today that peo­ple in the con­sumer world use AI is not to make a video or a fake pic­ture,” he said. ​“The top three rea­sons are ther­a­py, com­pan­ion­ship and self-help med­ical care.”

In oth­er words, peo­ple are engag­ing with AI sys­tems as if they were human. ​“It’s not human, but it def­i­nite­ly doesn’t feel like or sound like a machine,” he said.

Extend­ing the metaphor fur­ther, AI agents are not sim­ply ​“agents,” said Tobac­cow­ala. They are ​“repli­cants.”

“We are liv­ing in a world of aliens and repli­cants,” he said. ​“And we are humans.”

Com­put­ing Machines Vs. Feel­ing Machines

In build­ing upon this state­ment, Tobac­cow­ala reflect­ed that AI sys­tems are com­pu­ta­tion­al engines oper­at­ing in bina­ry log­ic. Human beings are not.

“Com­put­ers are dig­i­tal, sil­i­con-based com­put­ing machines,” Tobac­cow­ala said. ​“We are ana­log car­bon-based feel­ing machines.”

Ask a machine a ques­tion and it returns a direct answer. Ask a human a ques­tion and the response may be lay­ered, emo­tion­al, or evasive.

“Human beings are not com­put­ing machines. We are feel­ing machines,” he said.

This dis­tinc­tion has pro­found busi­ness impli­ca­tions, as many tech­nol­o­gists mod­el the future on machine log­ic by assum­ing humans will opti­mize deci­sions pure­ly for efficiency.

But real-world behav­ior tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. If humans opti­mized pure­ly for util­i­ty, Tobac­cow­ala asked, why wear expen­sive watch­es when smart­phones keep bet­ter time? Why own cars in cities where rideshar­ing is avail­able? Why choose lux­u­ry brands if cheap­er alter­na­tives func­tion just as well?

“Humans choose on sto­ries,” he said. ​“We choose on iden­ti­ty. We choose on design. We choose on desire. Peo­ple choose with their hearts, then use num­bers to jus­ti­fy what they just did.”

That ten­sion between ratio­nal opti­miza­tion and emo­tion­al deci­sion-mak­ing will shape how AI inte­grates into markets.

The Work Dis­rup­tion Ahead

His­tor­i­cal­ly, tech­no­log­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions have cre­at­ed more jobs than they destroyed — over time. But Tobac­cow­ala wor­ries about the pace.

“My biggest fear is orga­ni­za­tions are mov­ing too slow,” he said. He expects 20 – 30% of cur­rent tasks to be ​“machined away” in the near term. That work will not be reas­signed to humans using AI. It will sim­ply disappear.

“Half the jobs are cut away because the machines can do it bet­ter,” he said. ​“That part of our job is not going to be done by anybody.”

While new roles will emerge, the tran­si­tion could out­pace insti­tu­tion­al adaptation.

“No orga­ni­za­tion­al design is set­ting up for the oth­er world,” he said.

Alien Intel­li­gence Plus Human Intuition

Despite the dis­rup­tion he antic­i­pates, Tobac­cow­ala remains optimistic.

The future, he argued, belongs not to AI alone but to a com­bi­na­tion of AI and what he calls HI: human intuition.

“Human intel­li­gence is over­rat­ed,” he said. ​“It’s long been beaten.”

Instead, Tobac­cow­ala empha­sizes four unique­ly human strengths: intu­ition, insight, imag­i­na­tion, and interaction.

“Only messy human beings can con­nect with messy human beings,” he remarked, offer­ing an exam­ple from health care. 

AI tools may ana­lyze scans with remark­able accu­ra­cy, yet patients still want human doc­tors to deliv­er life-alter­ing news.

Embrace, Adapt, Complement

For indi­vid­u­als nav­i­gat­ing this shift, Tobac­cow­ala pro­posed a three-part frame­work: embrace, adapt, complement.

First, embrace AI. Learn it. Under­stand it. Accept that it is transformative.

Sec­ond, adapt. Some por­tion of cur­rent work will van­ish. Cling­ing to out­dat­ed roles is futile. ​“Between 20 – 30% of what we cur­rent­ly do is going to be machined away,” he reiterated.

Third, com­ple­ment. Iden­ti­fy how unique­ly human capa­bil­i­ties inte­grate with machine strengths. Tobac­cow­ala rejects the notion that work­ers will sim­ply lose jobs to oth­er work­ers who use AI.

“That’s like telling a horse you’re not going to lose your job to a trac­tor. You’re going to lose your job to a horse who learns how to use a trac­tor,” he said. ​“That’s nonsense.”

Some work will dis­ap­pear entire­ly. The oppor­tu­ni­ty lies in redesign­ing roles around what machines can­not replicate.

Effi­cien­cy Is Not the Strategy

Many enter­pris­es focus nar­row­ly on AI-dri­ven effi­cien­cy and effec­tive­ness. Cost sav­ings. Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains. Faster process­es. Those improve­ments are mea­sur­able — and nec­es­sary. But Tobac­cow­ala argued they are not where true advan­tage lies. ​“The real oppor­tu­ni­ties and threats are not going to come from being more effi­cient or more effec­tive,” he said.

Instead, lead­ers must con­sid­er exis­ten­tial oppor­tu­ni­ties and threats.

Tobac­cow­ala point­ed to the ship­ping con­tain­er as a his­tor­i­cal exam­ple. Stan­dard­ized con­tain­ers rev­o­lu­tion­ized glob­al trade, not mere­ly by improv­ing ship­ping effi­cien­cy but by reshap­ing entire cities, indus­tries, and sup­ply chains.

Sim­i­lar­ly, in media, some news­pa­pers opti­mized print­ing process­es while oth­ers ques­tioned the premise of print itself. Today, The New York Times has tran­si­tioned from 1.8 mil­lion print sub­scribers to rough­ly 12 mil­lion dig­i­tal sub­scribers, evolv­ing into a mul­ti­me­dia plat­form span­ning audio and video.

Roots and Wings

Large orga­ni­za­tions, Tobac­cow­ala not­ed, can­not rely sole­ly on yesterday’s strengths.

“There’s going to be some com­bi­na­tion of yesterday’s you, which I call ​‘roots,’ and tomorrow’s you, which I call ​‘wings,’” he said.

AI capa­bil­i­ty alone is not a dif­fer­en­tia­tor. It is infra­struc­ture, much like elec­tric­i­ty. What dif­fer­en­ti­ates com­pa­nies is how they inte­grate that infra­struc­ture into new val­ue cre­ation models. 

He point­ed to emerg­ing AI-first com­pa­nies gen­er­at­ing mil­lions in rev­enue per employ­ee as sig­nals of a new oper­at­ing mod­el. The ques­tion for estab­lished enter­pris­es is not whether they will remain impor­tant, but whether they will evolve.

Impor­tance of Optimism

Despite the imme­di­ate­ly incom­ing volatil­i­ty that AI promis­es, Tobaccowala’s out­look is not dystopi­an, he said. ​“Human beings adapt,” he said. ​“Human beings are res­ur­rec­tion engines.”

Every tech­no­log­i­cal upheaval has trig­gered fear. Every era has also gen­er­at­ed new forms of wealth, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and inno­va­tion. AI, he believes, will cure dis­eases, expand access to knowl­edge, and cre­ate eco­nom­ic growth. But it demands self-reinvention.

“It’s nev­er too late to invent tomor­row,” he said.

Stay­ing human in the age of AI is not about resist­ing alien intel­li­gence. It is about upgrad­ing human capa­bil­i­ty, lean­ing into intu­ition, imag­i­na­tion, and emo­tion­al intelligence.

For more cov­er­age of the Next Gen­er­a­tion SAP Enter­prise Archi­tect Sum­mit, sub­scribe to ASUG­’s First Five newslet­ter and stay tuned for more cus­tomer sto­ries, expert inter­views, guest per­spec­tives, and ses­sion recaps in the weeks ahead.