For fifty years, software existed because computers couldn’t think.
If you wanted a computer to solve a problem, somebody first had to solve that problem themselves. A programmer learned the process, understood the rules, documented the exceptions, and translated all of that knowledge into software. Payroll systems, CRM platforms, ERP solutions, accounting packages. Every one of them started the same way. A human figured something out, wrote it down as code, and sold the answer to everyone else.
That model made perfect sense because computers couldn’t reason. They couldn’t learn from experience, acquire skills, or apply judgment to a new situation. The only thing they could do was execute instructions someone else had already written. Software wasn’t really technology. Software was human reasoning frozen in advance.
Humans work differently. When a new employee encounters a problem, they draw on memory, apply skills they’ve learned, reason through the situation, and improve through experience. Over time, knowledge becomes skill, skill becomes expertise, and expertise becomes instinct. For the first time, AI introduces systems that can participate in parts of that same cycle. They can reason, leverage memory, acquire skills, and increasingly determine how to solve a problem instead of simply executing a predefined answer.
That’s the shift I think many leaders are missing. For decades, organizations acquired capabilities by buying software containing somebody else’s expertise. Increasingly, organizations will develop capabilities by teaching systems how the business works. Skills. Memory. Reasoning. Organizational learning. Those become the foundation. Software doesn’t disappear, but it stops being the starting point. It becomes the artifact left behind after learning occurs.
I don’t think the future is a person sitting in front of five applications trying to remember which buttons to click. I think the future is a person defining an objective and a set of constraints while a system uses accumulated knowledge, skills, memory, and reasoning to determine the path forward. For fifty years, we bought answers because computers couldn’t find them. The next generation of systems may learn how.
Scott Hagberg is Chief Technology Officer at United Capital Financial Advisors, Technology Advisor at Creative Planning, and Founder and Principal Consultant at ONS Consulting Group.
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