The Applied AI Opportunity: A Call to Two Tribes

November 26, 2025

To the engineers who see beyond the code, and to the experts who've mastered their craft,

I just spent the morning in deep conversation with two people who represent the future of Applied AI. Ian Newell, helping build NebariOS as the shared truth layer for organizations. Dawson Carroll, drowning in YouTube optimization work he can't scale without automation. Both conversations revealed the same profound truth: we're standing at the edge of a generationally big economic opportunity, and it has room for two very different kinds of heroes.

The Two Tribes of Applied AI

Let me speak to both of you directly, because you're both needed, and you might not even realize you're part of the same movement.

To the Engineers Who Get Business

You know who you are. You've built apps. You can string together agents. You understand APIs and workflows and system architecture. But more importantly—and this is what makes you special—you have an intuitive sense for actual business problems.

You're not the person obsessing over the latest model benchmarks. You're the person who hears a bakery owner describe their inventory nightmare and immediately starts mapping solutions in your head. You see a podcast producer spending 4 hours on tasks that should take 20 minutes, and you know exactly how to fix it.

The world doesn't need another thousand engineers at Anthropic. It needs a few million of YOU. Engineers who can sit with a local business owner on Monday, understand their actual workflow, and build something that works by Friday. Not in six months. Not after raising a Series A. By Friday.

To the Industry Experts Who "Aren't Tech People"

Stop telling yourself that story. You ARE tech people now. You just haven't realized it yet.

You've spent years—maybe decades—mastering your craft. You run agencies. You manage complex operations. You've built real businesses that make real money. You know every inefficiency, every bottleneck, every place where your industry bleeds time and money.

That knowledge? That's worth more than a computer science degree right now. Because you know what actually needs to be built. You understand the context that no Silicon Valley engineer will ever grasp from a two-hour discovery call.

Dawson doesn't need to become a software engineer to build his YouTube optimization platform. He needs to architect the workflow, define the truth, and then partner with someone (maybe me, maybe someone else) who can translate that into code. He IS the product owner. He IS the domain expert. The code is just implementation details. Rails to ensure consistent quality in his production pipeline.

The Window Is Closing (And Opening)

Here's what most people don't understand: the Applied AI revolution isn't primarily about the handful of state-of-the-art AI research labs making LLMs significantly better. What we have as of November 2025 is already good enough to transform 90% of businesses. The revolution is about the bridges being built between capability and implementation.

At this very moment, there's a huge gap between what's possible already, and what's being done. That gap is worth hundreds of thousands for an individual applied AI engineer, and trillions of dollars around the world. And it's not going to be captured by Google or Microsoft. It's going to be captured by people who can walk into a business and say, "I can fix that in a couple weeks."

The Dawson Model: Your Domain, Your Platform

Let me tell you what I saw in my conversation with Dawson today. He's not trying to build the next YouTube. He's solving HIS problem—the problem he lives with every day—and he's going to make hundreds of thousands (possily more) doing it.

His platform won't serve everyone. It will serve podcast YouTube channels. That's it. That narrow focus isn't a limitation; it's his superpower. He knows every edge case, every weird requirement, every place where generic tools fail. His niche platform will be perfect for something like 10,000 customers, and that's enough to build generational wealth.

Now multiply that by every industry, every specialized workflow, every niche that's been overlooked by the venture capital machine. That's the Applied AI opportunity.

The NebariOS Philosophy: Truth as a Service

Ian and Travis get something profound with NebariOS. They're not trying to build another app. They're building the truth layer—the shared context that makes every other app better. Kind of like an open and more trustworthy Palantir, for the rest of us.

This is the infrastructure play of Applied AI. NebariOS is building the nervous system that lets organizations actually maintain coherent truth while transforming. They're making it possible for a company to adopt twenty different AI tools without fragmenting into chaos.

Some of you should build on top of platforms like NebariOS. Some of you should build your own vertical platforms. Some of you should just be really, really good at implementing what already exists. There's room for all of it.

The Counter-Narrative We're Writing

Silicon Valley wants you to believe that AI will make you obsolete. That you should be scared. That only the cognitive elite will survive the transition. That's not just wrong—it's a deliberate lie designed to concentrate power.

AI is a massive force multiplier for people who are masters of a monetizable craft. With the right applied AI systems, one person with domain expertise can now do what used to require a team of ten.

Every business leveled up with AI becomes more resilient. Every person trained becomes more valuable.

We're not building the Tower of Babel here. We're not trying to become gods. We're taking fire from the mountain and bringing it down to warm every home. We're refusing both the concentration of power in Big Tech and the helplessness of technological ignorance.

Your Move

So here's my challenge to both tribes:

To the engineers: Go find a real business with a real problem and solve it. This week. Document what you learn. Share it. Teach others. Build the movement.

To the domain experts: Believe in your ability to capitalize on the AI revolution. Find technical partners who share your vision. You bring the truth of your industry; they bring the implementation. Together, you're unstoppable.

The Applied AI Society

This is why I'm building the Applied AI Society.

A community of practitioners who actually ship solutions used by real businesses. Who measure success in businesses transformed, not funding raised. Who document everything they learn because rising tides lift all boats.

The bakery in your neighborhood needs help. The law firm down the street is drowning in documents. The local manufacturer is guessing at demand. The yoga studio can't figure out scheduling. These aren't AI problems. They're YOUR problems to solve.

Don't wait for the tools to get better. They're already good enough.

Don't wait for the perfect moment. Today is the a great time to start.

My Commitment to You

I'm not just writing this from the sidelines. I'm building alongside you. Every workflow I create, I'll document. Every pattern I discover, I'll share. Every connection I can facilitate between businesses and builders, I'll make.

This is bigger than any one of us. It's about proving that technology can serve human flourishing rather than human replacement. It's about creating ten million millionaires instead of ten more billionaires. It's about keeping families together, communities strong, and human dignity intact through the transition.

The Applied AI opportunity isn't coming. It's here. Right now. In this moment.

The world is waiting for what only you can create.

With conviction and urgency,

Gary