When you work and live deeply within the realm of new technologies, it can be easy to forget that most of the world doesn't share that same perspective. Many of us have been spending the last 9 months freaking out about the generative AI arms race and the end of white-collar work, but my conversation this week with Mark Johnson steered my thinking in a very different direction.

Mark is the co-founder and CTO of an online learning platform called Pathwright, and the majority of our conversation was spent talking about AI from the perspective of the end user. The origin of Mark's 11-year-old tech company looks a lot different than we're accustomed to seeing. There was no venture capital or seed round. Instead, Pathwright was funded and built by aligning the development roadmap directly with the specific needs of early adopters.

In the decade since, Pathwright has continued to develop its platform with the mindset of serving actual needs and staying true to its core values. So, I was curious how a founder and CTO like Mark is thinking about the rush in the tech world to implement AI as quickly as possible. Is this something that his customers are demanding, or are technologists putting this pressure on themselves?

Besides this topic, we also talked about the implications of AI in education, the likelihood of an AI bubble, and how to foster an optimistic view of the future in the way you think about and interact with new technology.