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June 25, 2026

There are 4 levels of AI. You are stuck on 2.

AI adoption workflow automation specialist agents closed loops productivity

Summary

The article argues that AI adoption follows four distinct levels, and most individuals and organizations remain stalled at the second level, missing the compounding gains available higher up. Level 1 represents outright avoidance of AI tools; Level 2 involves occasional, ad‑hoc use of chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for tasks such as drafting emails or summarizing articles, yielding only modest time savings. The author warns that Level 2 feels like a destination but is merely the front door, delivering roughly five percent of AI’s potential. This superficial usage explains why only about nine percent of companies are truly scaling with AI, while the rest mistake experimentation for transformation. Level 3 shifts from isolated prompts to systematic, end‑to‑end workflows: a human provides input, the AI performs the core thinking, and a human reviews the output. By mapping repeatable tasks into this three‑step pattern and stacking multiple workflows around a single function, users can create specialist agents—AI systems tuned deeply to areas like SEO, email copy, or ad creative. The shift in experience is stark; returning to manual methods feels as inefficient as “drinking soup with a fork.” Level 4 represents the pinnacle: closed‑loop systems where agents not only execute tasks but also monitor, evaluate, and improve one another without constant human oversight. A human sits at the top to manage the loop, while the agents handle execution, quality checks, and iteration. The article cites an example where an agent analyzes an ad account, amplifies winning creatives, generates hundreds of variations, and terminates underperforming campaigns—reducing a two‑week effort to a few seconds. This compression of time, rather than mere saving, drives exponential organizational performance. To climb the levels, the author proposes three immediate actions: (1) identify a weekly, high‑impact repetitive workflow; (2) explicitly map it as human input → AI thinking → human review and document the steps; (3) implement the AI‑mediated middle step, review the output, and iterate. Repeating this process builds the foundation for specialist agents, and linking those agents creates the closed loops that characterize Level 4. By moving beyond casual chatbot use to structured, self‑reinforcing AI systems, individuals and teams can unlock the compounding advantage that separates leaders from laggards in the AI era.

Hey

I asked my dad a question last month that has been stuck in my head ever since.

He was a programmer in the 90s. I was online when I was 8 years old. So I asked him how long it took the companies he worked at to adopt email. He said a long time. I pushed him. How long is a long time. He said 5 years.

Five years to adopt email!!!

That broke my brain a little. Because back then the internet was new and weird and most people did not trust it. Today the situation is different. You are holding infinite intelligence in your hand and it is already working.

You cannot afford to wait 5 years. If the person sitting next to you is compounding at 10x and they do it for 12 months, they are gone. You will never catch them.

So I want to give you a simple map today. There are 4 levels of AI adoption. Most people are stuck on level 2 and do not even know there are two more floors above them.

Let me walk you up the building.

#### **Level 1: Unacceptable**

This one is obvious. You are not using AI at all.

No ChatGPT. No Claude. No Gemini. Nothing. You are doing every task by hand the same way you did it in 2019.

There is no judgment here, but there is no future here either. If this is a teammate, this is the person you have to worry about. If this is you, the good news is the next level is one tab away.

#### **Level 2: Capable**

This is where most of the world lives right now.

You open ChatGPT or Claude. You ask it questions. You use it to search, to draft an email, to summarise an article. You believe in it a little. It saves you a few minutes here and there.

This is good. This is real progress. But here is the trap. Level 2 feels like the destination. It is not. It is the front door. You are talking to one tool, one question at a time, and then closing the tab. You are getting maybe 5 percent of what is actually available to you.

The reason this matters is a number that should bother you. Only 9 percent of companies are actually scaling with AI right now. The other 91 percent are sitting at level 2, poking at ChatGPT, calling it transformation. Almost nobody is shipping. That is not a technology problem. The tools clearly work for some people. It is an implementation problem. And implementation is exactly what the next two levels are about.

#### **Level 3: Adaptive**

This is where it stops being a chatbot and starts being a system.

At level 3 you are not asking one off questions anymore. You are building end to end workflows. Let me make that concrete, because the phrase sounds bigger than it is.

An end to end workflow is just three steps. A human gives an input. The AI does the thinking in the middle. The human reviews the output. That is it. Most of the work you do every day is already a workflow like this. You are just doing the middle part by hand.

Once you see that, you start stacking these workflows together. And when you stack enough of them around one job, you get a specialist agent.

One agent that is good at SEO. One that is good at email. One that is good at ad creative. You stop using a generic assistant and you start building specialists that go deep in one area.

The shift in how it feels is enormous. One person we work with described going back to normal work after this as drinking soup with a fork. It technically functions. It just does not work. Once you have specialist agents running your repeat tasks, doing it the old way feels exactly like that.

#### **Level 4: Transformative**

This is the top floor. This is closed loops.

For most of history we humans worked in open loops. Hey Bob, how is that report going. Hey Mike, how are the paid ads doing. Hey Anna, where are we on the creatives. Constant checking in. Nobody enjoys it. Nobody wants to be chased and nobody wants to do the chasing.

A closed loop removes the chasing. It is a set of tasks where agents do the work, check each other, and improve over time without you standing over them. You point a human at the top to manage the loop, and the loop runs.

Here is a real example of what that looks like. You can now tell one agent to look at your ad account, double down on the creatives that are working, spin up 200 variations of them, and kill the campaigns that are dead. Work that used to take 2 weeks gets compressed into about 2 seconds. That is the whole game. You are not saving time anymore. You are compressing it.

So the org chart of the future is simple. Humans at the top. Specialist agents below them. Closed loops connecting the agents. If your team is built that way, it compounds. If it is not, it stalls.

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How to actually climb. Three moves by Friday.

Theory is nice. Here is what to do this week.

First, pick one workflow that repeats every single week and gives you the largest return. You know what it is. The annoying thing you do every Monday. That is your first target.

Second, map it as the three steps. Human input. AI thinking. Human review. Write it down literally like that. Most people skip this and that is why their AI use stays stuck at level 2.

Third, build that one workflow and run it for a week. That is the light bulb moment. Once one repeating task runs without you, you will never look at AI as a search box again. Then you build the second one.

You do not need a course. You do not need to be technical. I am not technical and I just like nerding out on this stuff.

The people winning with AI right now are not smarter than you. They are just earlier than you. They started before they felt ready.

The brain you build for yourself first is what you eventually hand to your whole team. One human plus five agents is a 10x team member. Maybe more. But it starts with one workflow, this week.

Start climbing. You are closer to level 4 than you think.

Stay curious, talk to you tomorrow.

Stay curious, talk to you tomorrow.