The AI race today is two simultaneous stories: rocket‑science advances in models and science‑fiction timelines on one side, and the slow, messy reality of how companies actually extract value on the other. In this episode we map the disconnect. From OpenAI’s aggressive research timetables (small discoveries by 2026, bigger leaps by 2028) and trillion‑scale infrastructure asks, to the economics that make intelligence exponentially cheaper yet infrastructure massively expensive, the stakes and costs are enormous. We unpack the safety and policy asks being pushed — mandatory safety standards for frontier labs, resilience ecosystems like cybersecurity, active impact tracking, and a commercial plea to broaden CHIPS tax credits to data centers and grid upgrades to close the “electron gap.” But the human story matters more for marketers and operators. McKinsey and Atlassian data show 88% of firms use AI, yet only ~33% scale it company‑wide and only ~6% report meaningful EBIT uplift. Atlassian calls out the collaboration paradox: individuals are faster, but organizations aren’t. The winners aren’t just automating old tasks — they’re redesigning workflows to get 10x outcomes. We spotlight practical wins you can copy today: diagnosing home internet from photos, AI‑driven personal productivity audits, multilingual travel allergy cards, automated HTML from mockups, and ChatGPT Deep Research that compresses days of competitive intelligence into minutes with citations. Actionable takeaways: prioritize data quality and integration, pick one complex workflow to redesign (not just speed up), build connected systems rather than isolated personal tools, and proof a playbook before 2028’s capability inflection. Final provocation for listeners: what single workflow in your org would be catastrophic to leave unchanged when the models leap — and how fast will you act to redesign it?