Marissa Kos is a futurist and opinion leader in the AI space, and the founder of MxM, an AI-powered marketing and business development platform. She helps business owners and brands optimise marketing, sales, operations and culture through tailored automation systems designed for scalable success.
The headlines are relentless. AI is either a miracle cure or a job-killing superintelligence poised to make us all redundant.
For most UK business owners, the reality is a confusing mix of anxiety and a relentless pressure to keep pace.
- Are you falling behind if you don’t adopt it?
- Are you making your team obsolete if you do?
Futurist and AI expert Marissa Kos offers a refreshingly pragmatic answer: we’re getting the AI story all wrong.
Her clear-eyed analysis cuts through the corporate hype to reveal the technology for what it is today — a powerful but still primitive tool.
Her perspective explains why we’re in the “floppy disc era” of AI, how to navigate the tech giants’ “marketing war,” and most importantly, how to use it as a “time ATM” to fight burnout and make your business more human, not less.
Welcome to the “Floppy Disc Era” of AI
Anyone who has spent time wrestling with an AI chatbot knows the technology is far from perfect. It can feel clunky, produce bizarre ‘hallucinations’, and require constant re-prompting to deliver a useful result.
Marissa Kos has a simple but powerful metaphor for this stage: we are in the “floppy disc era” of AI.
The friction we experience is a direct result of our own high expectations. We instinctively judge these new tools against the seamless, sophisticated technology we use every day.
As Kos explains, we’re setting an impossibly high bar.
“We’re applying the standards for tech that we’ve nuanced over three decades now into tech that’s brand new…”
Our current devices are at the peak of their evolution; AI has barely started its journey.
Another clear sign of this infancy is where the marketing focuses. Tech giants boast about how fast their models are, a classic tell that a technology is still in its foundational stage.
Kos points out this is a recurring pattern. “Whenever you hear tech’s really fast, that means we’re at the beginning of that tech,” she says. “If that’s the claim that’s impressive… we’re really at the start.”
Thinking of AI like a product in its infancy will give you the strategic mindset to move past the current frustrations and see the enormous potential waiting to be unlocked.
Don’t Be a Spectator in the Corporate AI Race
But this technological immaturity is only half the story. The other half is the narrative being built around it.
The constant barrage of AI news — from world-changing breakthroughs to doomsday warnings — isn’t just a reflection of rapid innovation. It’s the sound of a battle.
Kos describes the current climate as less of a technological revolution and more of a corporate arms race.
“It feels more like a marketing war than anything else,” she states.
This relentless hype creates a narrative designed to keep us hooked, not informed, leaving business owners feeling like passive spectators.
The antidote to this fear-driven cycle is practical, hands-on knowledge.
AI literacy is no longer a technical skill; it is a strategic necessity for leaders. Staying on the sidelines and absorbing headlines is a recipe for poor decision-making.
As Kos warns, “If you don’t know about AI and you’re hysterical and whipped up into a frenzy over the third party information you’re receiving… that’s not going to help you.”
And she’s right. While any new technology can seem daunting at first, the opportunities for SME business growth from AI are here right now.
A Crisis of Leadership: The Problem with the AI Race
This disconnect runs deeper than just marketing. The current race is not being run with the user’s best interests at heart; it’s a frantic scramble for market dominance.
Kos identifies a “desperate thirstiness in the AI industry space at the moment that’s very offputting.”
This survival-mode behaviour fosters a culture of secrecy, not transparency. Instead of clear explanations about how the technology can benefit society, users are left in the dark about how these powerful models are being trained and controlled.
“What I’d like to see is show me how you’re developing the models behind the scenes,” she demands.
“I want transparency on what the guard rails are.”
In the absence of this openness, the narrative is filled with fearmongering about a cataclysmic AI takeover. This tactic undermines trust and fails a fundamental test of stewardship.
As Kos puts it, we want to feel like there are “adults in the room” when dealing with technology this significant, but the current conduct often suggests the opposite.
A Lesson from the Past: Why AI Can’t Be Another Social Media
This frantic pace and lack of transparency feel eerily familiar. Kos draws a direct and urgent parallel to another technology that reshaped our world: social media.
In its early days, we embraced it with little understanding of the business models working behind the scenes.
By the time the full consequences — from data privacy scandals to mental health impacts — became mainstream knowledge, the systems were deeply entrenched.
As Kos puts it, “By the time it became, you know, Netflix documentaries and the rest, the milk was spilled.”
With artificial intelligence, the stakes are even higher, but she offers a crucial piece of hope: “The milk is not spilled here.” We are still in the early days, and we have the benefit of hindsight.
This is our chance to avoid repeating the same mistakes. “If we use social media as a cautionary tale then we as the consumers can insist on far better regulations, ethics and transparency,” she states. “We would be dafted not to.”
Using AI to Take Back Control and Fight Burnout
The best way to take back control is to focus on practical value. The fear of job replacement dominates the conversation, but this misses the technology’s most immediate benefit: its ability to combat workplace burnout. Kos sees AI not as a replacement for human intellect, but as a tool for delegation.
She asks, “Why are we alienating something that is literally what I call an AI time ATM?”
It’s a machine that gives you back your most valuable resource. Think of the hours spent summarising reports or wading through inboxes. By delegating this administrative drag to a bot, we free up our teams to focus on the work that drives the business forward. As Kos puts it, “The only way to future proof yourself on AI is to be more human.”
And this delegation is just the beginning. Currently, most of us interact with chatbots — assistants that generate responses. But the next evolution is the AI agent. As Kos explains, an agent takes a huge leap forward: “…it’s able to hook up to something else in your tech stack and take action for you… taking autonomous action on your behalf.” A chatbot helps you write an email faster. An agent could manage your inbox entirely.
AI as a Creative Partner, Not a Replacement
Nowhere is this “more human” principle more relevant than in creative fields. When a machine can generate cinematic video from a simple prompt, is human creativity becoming redundant?
Kos argues this fear overlooks an evolutionary truth: people are endlessly fascinated by other people. As our digital spaces become saturated with AI-generated content — or “slop,” as it’s been dubbed online — our appetite for genuine human connection will only intensify. “The more AI content that’s on social media, the more people will be like where are the humans?” she explains. “We’re naturally obsessed with ourselves.”
The real opportunity, therefore, is not in replacement but in partnership. AI becomes an incredibly powerful co-creator, a tool for experimentation on a scale never seen before. It ushers in a new frontier of creative fusion. “I think the era of remixing will be like never before,” Kos predicts. Your team’s unique taste and strategic insight become the indispensable ingredients in this new creative process.
A Deeper Question: Was AI Discovered, Not Created?
Beyond the practicalities, there is a more profound idea that reframes our entire relationship with AI. It’s a concept that moves beyond productivity into the philosophical. According to a view Kos shared, “AI was discovered, not created.”
This suggests that artificial intelligence isn’t a machine we invented from scratch, but a fundamental property of complex systems. To make this abstract idea concrete, Kos offers a powerful analogy: “I equate it to electricity. Electricity has existed without us… we didn’t create electricity. We harnessed it.” This perspective changes everything. If AI is more like a natural force than a simple tool, then our goal shouldn’t be one of total control, but of responsible stewardship — reminding us that we are at the very beginning of understanding what we have truly unlocked.
Final Thoughts on a Hopeful AI Future
The current AI landscape is undeniably noisy, defined by a confusing mix of dystopian warnings and utopian promises. But the path forward, as Marissa Kos outlines, is far more pragmatic.
It begins with perspective: recognising that we are in the ‘floppy disc era’ of a new technology. It requires a shift in mindset: moving from being a passive spectator in a corporate ‘marketing war’ to becoming an active, literate user. And its most immediate value lies not in replacing people, but in liberating them — acting as a ‘time ATM’ that fights burnout by automating the mundane.
The question is no longer if AI will change your business, but how you will use it to reclaim your time, unleash your team’s creativity, and build a more resilient, human-centric organisation.
What are the biggest challenges your team faces when it comes to adopting AI? Let us know your thoughts.
Listen to the full podcast here: How to Work Smarter, Not Harder with AI — Marissa Kos