Mostly White with Shades of Yellow.

Every hear of Col. Jeff Cooper’s stages of threat awareness?

It’s classic and referenced so frequently there’s no need to give it too much space here.

Instead, I wanted to apply it to Artificial Intelligence, because as I drift from business and social circle to business and social circle, it’s really the best bucket I can align with to understand what I see.

Basically, Cooper has 4 stages: White — Yellow — Orange — Red

WHITE – Unaware & UNPREPARED.

Translation: Oblivious to or Uninterested in AI and the world to come.

YELLOW – Aware of the environment but don’t really perceive any threat.

Translation: In DENIAL. Unable to accept that the velocity of changes in and to our lives is now orders of magnitude faster than when most of us who are owning businesses grew up.

ORANGE – Something has grabbed our attention. We’re looking to CONFIRM.

Translation: We’ve seen something in action, but still on the fence, maybe not-so-impressed. A Virtual Assistant, a note-taking bot, a scramble data set organization that is mildly informative, or a complete article rewrite that has turned your piece into Kim Scott. We’ve decided to experiment, learn, and even ADOPT some tools.

RED – It’s go time.

Translation: We’re affected. We know drivers. We know administrative professionals that just got downsized. We know or have college graduates enrolling in Law Schools instead of that BA or BS landing them some work. Our competition has implemented something and is now growing multiples faster than we are. We’re now MAKING CHANGES and investing real money.

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The amount of friends and colleagues I see living in White or Yellow is concerning.

Certainly because they are friends and colleagues.

I will also admit, sometimes I am not so fun at parties (but I’m getting better, though)…and after a party… we remember the commercial right?

"Friends don’t let friends…"

and I think that, because we love our friends and colleagues, its time to ask them for the keys to their White and Yellow circles and order them an Orange Uber.

The price of a ticket (or worse) is going to be literally unaffordable.

If we truly love our friends and colleagues…we're definitely at the TIPPING POINT where it’s Go-Time for us to have some RADICAL CONVERSATIONS.

You "just might be saving their LIFE" is likely too strong a statement.

But certainly their "LIVELIHOOD."