The Roundup: Specialists Are the Most Exposed to AI. Here's What to Do About It.
Our world doesn’t quite know what to do with multidisciplinary thinkers. It can’t find the right category for us. Eli and I are exactly those kinds of people — we have wide-ranging interests, we like the big picture, and we’ve always found more energy in the connections between disciplines than inside any single one. In entrepreneurial settings, that’s a real asset. In corporate environments built around specialists, it can feel like a liability.
“The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.”
—David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
We think that’s about to flip. As AI takes over more of the execution work that used to require narrow, deep expertise, the ability to connect — to see across fields, borrow from unexpected places, and synthesize — is going to become the differentiator. The synoptic thinker, the person who doesn’t fit neatly into one box, is going to have a very good decade.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
—Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Which is why we keep coming back to creative people in fields adjacent to our own. Musicians, writers, filmmakers, architects — people who’ve had to build a creative practice from scratch and live inside it for years. They’ve solved problems we’re still naming.
Sam Beam is one of those people. You likely know him as Iron & Wine, the project behind five Grammy nominations and one of the most distinctive voices in American folk music. What you might not know is that he almost didn’t become a musician at all. There’s a version of his life where he’s still a film professor in Miami, drawing in his sketchbook between classes, recording songs on a four-track as a side hobby. That version nearly won. Instead, a friend passed along his recordings, and everything changed.
When Eli and I sat down with Sam, we weren’t just talking to a musician. We were talking to a painter, a filmmaker, a collaborator, and a father of five who has spent decades thinking carefully about how to build a creative practice that can genuinely surprise you. A lot of what he shared resonated far beyond music — whether you’re running a design agency, leading a product team, or just trying to stay creatively alive inside a large organization.
Three things he said stayed with me.
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Sam Beam of Iron & Wine: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Substack
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