Kevin SuraceKevin Surace is an AI pioneer, inventor, author, and human effectiveness authority helping people thrive while AI reshapes work and life.

If You Are Not Going To AI First, You Are Already Behind

10 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this keynote excerpt, Kevin Surace argues that modern professionals must adopt an "AI‑first" mindset, using AI tools at least five times per hour to stay competitive. He contrasts this approach with the traditional habit of opening Word, Excel, or PowerPoint first, explaining that he instead asks AI what he wants to accomplish and lets the model generate the work. He cites a recent achievement of creating a 100‑slide PowerPoint presentation entirely with AI—only importing the final deck into PowerPoint— and describes how he edits slides by issuing natural‑language commands to the AI rather than manually adjusting fonts, colors, or layouts. Surace claims this shift eliminates the need to master UI details, accelerates output, and that audiences care only about the final product, not the process, positioning AI‑first as a competitive differentiator.

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If your people aren't turning to AI first and 5 times an hour, you are way behind. When I say that in my keynotes, people look at me and go, I didn't use it 5 times last month. I said, yeah, your competitor did. Where's that leave you? I didn't think about it that way. Okay, well, fine. You go to Word first, you go to Excel first, you go to PowerPoint first. I don't do that. I go to AI first and decide what am I trying to do? What am I trying to accomplish today? And only in the last few months, I can create a 100-slide PowerPoint presentation 100% with AI. I never touch PowerPoint. I put it in PowerPoint at the end. And if I'm going to edit a slide, I don't edit it. I tell AI, change this slide, and it changes it for me. That is changing the entire dynamic of how we actually interact with these tools. I don't need to know, oh, what thing do I do on the dropdown to erase and move? I don't have to do that. Change the font to this, make it bolder. I want a black background, I want it in white. Boom, there it is. I don't worry about all of those details anymore. And it turns out nobody cared about those details once they saw my presentation. All they wanted was the presentation. They didn't care how I got there.