Survive the AI Apocalypse - A Guide for Solutionists

Get the book here: Survive the AI Apocalypse: A Guide for Solutionists

Episode Guest:
Bronwyn Williams, co-author

Episode Summary:

Core Thesis of the Book
The next decade will be a brutal unearned-privilege apocalypse. AI and productivity tools are rapidly exposing and attacking any place where price has become detached from real value delivered. Jobs, industries, governments, and entire generations that have been extracting more than they contribute are now extremely vulnerable. The book reframes this not as a purely technological disruption but as a value-reckoning that levels the playing field toward genuine meritocracy.Key Mindset Shift: From Price to Value

• Stop thinking 'How much do I/get paid?' - Start asking 'How much undeniable value do I create for others?'
• High salaries, inherited wealth, or political power that are not backed by proportional value creation are now the biggest liabilities.
• Pools of 'stagnant capital' (unearned profit, bloated bureaucracies, overpaid middlemen) are magnets for hungry competitors, startups, revolutions, or AI automation.

Why Gen Z is angry and disengaged

• They feel the social contract is broken: 'We did everything we were told and still get less.'
• This grievance culture breeds zero-sum thinking - nihilism, quiet quitting, sports-betting over investing, or outright revolution.
• The antidote is personal agency: become ruthlessly clear about the value you bring so you can walk away from exploitative situations and command your worth.

Discernment in the age of DeepFakes and synthetic media

• The last 40 years taught us to trust machines over human judgment.
• The next 40 years will require the exact opposite: radical skepticism of anything digital.
• Nothing digital (photo, video, blockchain record, AI-generated news) is proof of truth by default.
• Re-learn to trust human intuition, context, and on-the-ground verification. Practical habit: question the - on-ramps and off-ramps - who entered the data? Who wrote the code?

The Solutionist Framework (8-step model for individuals, organizations, and cities)

1. Empathize - deeply understand the real lived problem of citizens/customers
2. Contextualize - no copy-paste 'smart city' solutions; what is unique here?
3. Validate with data
4. Anticipate future evolution of the problem
5. Co-ideate solutions with stakeholders
6. Validate affordability and desirability
7. Operationalize and build (only now bring in AI/digitization)
8. Mobilize, learn, iterate

Crucially, technology is layered in at step 6-7, not step 1.
This prevents expensive white-elephant projects and ensures human-AI symbiosis instead of displacement.

Application to African future cities

• Informal economies and rapid urbanization make Africa especially fertile for value-first innovation.
• Start every city project with empathy for residents (not imported Davos fantasies).
• Use AI to amplify human ingenuity in informal sectors instead of trying to formalize and tax them to death.
• Hungry, young populations + cheap tools = enormous breakout potential if leaders focus on delivering undeniable value instead of extracting rents.

Ultimate Call to Action - Flip the Fear
If you're comfortable right now, be afraid - someone hungrier, armed with better tools, is coming for your lunch.
But you are not powerless. The flip side of fear is radical ownership:

• Ruthlessly interrogate the value you deliver in every interaction.
• Make sure the person paying your salary, taxes, or fees leaves the exchange feeling they received more than they gave.
• When everyone starts playing this positive-sum game, vicious cycles become virtuous ones.

In short:
The AI apocalypse is real, but it's mostly coming for bullshit and unearned privilege.
Become a value-creating Solutionist and Africa's coming reset can be the continent's greatest renaissance rather than its collapse.