Why Your AI Tools Will Be Obsolete — and Why That Should Not Worry You

Companies investing in AI tools are quietly asking the same question: what if today’s platforms are obsolete in two years? Writing in Inc., author and speaker Joel Comm argues the question itself is the wrong one — the specific tools will inevitably be replaced, but the organizational capability built around them will not.

Comm draws a parallel to early mobile technology. In 2005, a Palm Treo 650 was the pinnacle of consumer tech. Today it cannot run a single modern app. But companies that built mobile strategies in 2005 did not waste their investment — they learned how customers behaved on small screens, built organizational habits around a new channel, and carried that knowledge forward as hardware evolved. The Treo became worthless. The knowledge did not.

Key Takeaways

• Platform bets are the wrong focus: Executive teams debating which AI vendor or model to commit to are asking the wrong question. The right question is what adaptable skills and workflows the organization needs to develop — skills that will transfer across whatever platforms come next.
• Experiment now, even imperfectly: Organizations that begin experimenting today build the organizational muscle memory to move faster when the next wave of AI tools arrives.
• AI adoption is a capability-building exercise: Treating AI investment as infrastructure for learning — rather than a specific technology commitment — changes how teams evaluate risk and ROI.

Read the full article on Inc.com