The AI chicken nuggets problem
I keep hearing the same fear-mongering online lately:
"Learn AI before someone who knows AI takes your job!"
But something about this line just makes my brain feel itchy.
It takes me back to a strategy class at NYU, where we learned the resource-based view from a clip of The Wire.
In the clip, Wallace marvels at whoever invented the chicken nugget. Surely that guy must be really rich.
D'Angelo turns to him and explains that of course not — he's just a cook in a basement somewhere, probably still being forced to come up with new recipes for tastier fries.
The point: the value doesn't lie in the chef.
The value lies in the nuggets.
And if the company owns the nuggets, the chef is disposable.
I watch AI influencers encouraging finance pros to learn AI so they can be more valuable to their companies, and I keep wondering:
Is this just the nuggets all over again?
Say you spend the weekend vibe coding a tool that forecasts AR from email conversations.
Super cool! But when you demo it to management on Monday and their eyes light up, think about why they get excited...
It's not because you spent the weekend being innovative;
It's because they now own a tool that can get the job done faster, maybe even without you.
Now, the thing that changes this nuggets game here is if the cooking were hard.
That nugget chef is replaceable because nugget cooking is a skill anyone could learn.
Things can be different with skills that are sophisticated, scarce, or only acquired over significant time.
So let's apply those rules to AI at work:
Does building with AI require sophistication? It used to. But the skills required are decreasing as AI companies push for adoption.
Is it available to everyone? A couple hundred bucks a month gets most folks the same tools.
Does it take time to learn? Again, decreasingly so. And the knowledge isn't durable because of how fast the tools change.
So the lesson? AI skills alone won't make us the valuable nuggets. We're just the cooks.
And that means back to the basement, or getting kicked to the curb.
Bummer.
But then what can we do?
Two questions matter here:
Who owns the nuggets? And where does the value actually lie?
Who owns the nuggets?
If you're an entrepreneur building with AI, you might. AI presents huge shortcuts for productivity. And on the commercial side, and as long as what you build draws on something rare — specialized knowledge, a unique data set, something other entrepreneurs couldn't easily replicate — you keep what you create.
If you're an employee, you don't. Every efficiency you build belongs to your company. The build might be a shiny star on your performance review. Whether it keeps you employed is a trust game with the higher-ups.
The tools you create don't give you real power.
Where does the value actually lie?
AI fluency is a rare skill now, but it's only a matter of time before it becomes a commodity.
And you don't want to bet your career on cooking nuggets.
You want to BE the nuggets.
What you actually want to bet on is whatever isn't commodity-cheap. The skills you genuinely own. The ones that are durable, hard to acquire, and scarce enough to matter.
The same skills that have always set future CFOs apart from the rest of the finance organization:
Nuanced judgment. Excellent team management and leadership. Niche wisdom and experience. Novel problem-solving. Productive creativity.
These skills are rare, durable, and take ages to acquire.
And YOU own them. They move with you.
Hiring an analyst who can build tools with AI will soon be as cheap as hiring a mediocre designer.
Hiring an experienced CFO who understands how to navigate a complex team transition under public scrutiny will never be cheap.
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