The true cost of ignoring AI? Look at what happened to China during the Industrial Revolution. In 1793, China was one of the world’s most powerful empires. A British envoy named George Macartney arrived at the Qing court with ships full of British manufactured goods, including clocks and telescopes. Emperor Qianlong sent him home. In a letter to King George III, Qianlong wrote that China possessed everything in abundance and had no need for British manufactured goods. It may sound arrogant today. But at the time, it seemed reasonable. China had spent centuries optimizing for stability. It had an enormous population of farmers and a social order that worked. Industrialization would have upended all of that. Farmers would have had to leave their land and work fixed shifts in factories. This would have caused a generation of friction. Qianlong feared the disruption that could create. So he kept things as they were. Britain kept building factories. 47 years later, a British iron steamship called Nemesis sailed into the Pearl River in southern China. It had been built with industrial processes in a shipyard near Liverpool. In a single day, it helped destroy 11 Chinese war junks. What followed is what China still calls the “Century of Humiliation.” In 2016, Xi Jinping said China had "missed technological revolution time and again" causing the Century of Humiliation. I believe we're living through the next one. The Cognitive Revolution is going to be a lot like the Industrial Revolution. Just much, much bigger and much faster. It won’t be easy. People who were very good at their jobs will face massive disruption and many companies will spend money on things that don't work. The pain of adoption is felt immediately. The cost of waiting shows up much later. China had 47 years to discover the cost of waiting. My intuition is that AI won't give any person, company or country that long.