At Push, we saw this coming over three years ago. While most businesses debated whether to hire 'digital natives', those comfortable with social, mobile, and cloud technology, we made a different call. We started actively recruiting AI natives: people who don't just use AI tools, but think through AI-first lenses. People who structure problems around what machines can automate and what humans should own.
Digital natives are already behind the curve.
The Gap Between Digital Fluency and AI Fluency
The Economist rightly notes that generative AI excels at certain tasks, but struggles with others, its "jagged frontier" means companies need time to determine where to apply it. But here's what that analysis misses: the speed of adaptation isn't just about technology diffusion. It's about talent.
Digital natives grew up with smartphones and SaaS platforms. They're excellent at navigating interfaces and adopting new apps. But AI natives understand something fundamentally different: how to collaborate with intelligence, not just tools.
They know how to structure prompts. They understand probabilistic outputs. They can spot when an LLM is hallucinating, and they know how to guide it back on track. More importantly, they're not threatened by automation, they see it as leverage.
According to The Economist, many entry-level roles, data crunching, report summarising, back-office scripting, are precisely what AI excels at. That's true. But businesses shouldn't respond by eliminating those roles entirely. They should be rethinking who fills them and how they work.
At Push, we've embedded AI across campaign planning, creative testing, bid optimisation, and performance analysis. But the people running those systems aren't just clicking buttons. They're making judgment calls that no model can make: understanding brand nuance, interpreting client goals, navigating cultural context, deciding when to override the algorithm.
Why We Bet on AI Natives Early
Well over a year ago, we made a deliberate shift in our hiring strategy. We didn't just ask candidates if they'd used ChatGPT. We tested whether they could work with AI as a co-pilot, not just a shortcut.
We looked for people who:
- Understood how to engineer effective prompts
- Could evaluate AI-generated outputs critically
- Saw automation as a way to focus on higher-order thinking, not replace it
- Were comfortable iterating in real time with machine assistance
This wasn't about chasing a buzzword. It was about recognising that AI fluency is the new baseline competency, much like digital literacy was a decade ago.
The Economist warns that young people in entry-level positions are most exposed to AI displacement. We agree. But the solution isn't to avoid hiring them, it's to hire differently. Bring in people who can do what AI can't: apply judgment, synthesise complex information, think strategically, and connect dots across domains.
What AI Natives Bring That Digital Natives Don't
The gap between digital and AI natives isn't just technical, it's also cognitive.
Digital natives learned to adapt to new software quickly. AI natives are learning to co-create with systems that learn. That's a fundamentally different skill.
AI natives understand that the future of work isn't "human vs. machine." It's human with machine. They know when to delegate and when to intervene. They treat AI as an accelerant, not a replacement.
At Push, this mindset shift has had a real impact. Our team uses AI to automate repetitive analysis, generate first-draft creative concepts, and surface insights from massive datasets. But the strategy? The storytelling? The client relationships? That's all human.
The AI handles the grunt work. Our people focus on what matters: driving growth, solving complex problems, and delivering results that move the needle.
The Window Is Closing
The Economist is right that businesses have time to adapt. Electricity took decades to transform factories. But the pace of AI diffusion is faster, and the businesses moving now will have a structural advantage.
Governments and companies that wait for disruption to arrive will find themselves reacting, not leading. The organisations that thrive will be the ones building AI-first cultures today, hiring people who understand how to work with intelligence, not just interfaces.
At Push, we recognised early that AI represents a generational opportunity for transformation. But seizing that opportunity required more than deploying new tools. It meant rethinking how we hire, how we train, and how we structure work.
We didn't wait for the talent market to catch up. We went out and found the people who already got it.
The Real Question Isn't Whether to Hire, It's Who
Jamie Dimon's suggestion that governments should ban AI-driven layoffs is well-intentioned but misses the point. The issue isn't whether jobs disappear, it's whether businesses equip their people to evolve.
As The Economist notes, the biggest mistake would be to stop hiring young people altogether. But hiring the wrong young people, those who lack AI fluency, won't solve the problem either.
The future belongs to AI natives. The question is whether your business is ready to find them, hire them, and empower them to lead.
At Push, we made that call over a year ago. And we're already seeing the results.
What's your strategy for building an AI-native workforce? Let's talk.
