GRR Martin Does Not Need a Faster Typewriter

Fans of the Game of Thrones book series have been waiting over a decade now for the next installment. Distractions like the TV show certainly didn't help in the writing process. Either way, I don't know what exactly the author, G.R.R. Martin, needs to finally finish "Winds of Winter", but it's definitely not a faster typewriter. The bottlenecks show up elsewhere, and the speed of typing is just small noise in the grand scheme.

When considering AI and its potential to accelerate your organization, keep this in mind: It's a comprehensive system you're trying to optimize, not just a single component. In many traditional software organizations, for example, any changes to production code undergo multiple stages of review and quality gates. If you can suddenly generate code at double the speed, that won't matter if you keep the speed of reviews the same. Conversely, you can probably speed up your delivery by a significant factor if you optimize these handoffs and gates first, before implementing an advanced AI solution.

I'm starting to see a pattern: AI brings outsized benefits to organizations that, even before AI, were agile, nimble, and well-organized, whereas AI will struggle and spin its wheels in an organization that's dysfunctional, brittle, and messy. My hope is that the promised benefits from AI will serve as a sufficient wake-up call for organizations to clean up their act.