AI Will Outthink Humans in Two Years. Here's What to Do Before Then.

Ben Goertzel doesn't mince words. The SingularityNET CEO told CoinDesk in February 2026 that AI will think "better, more strategically than humans" within two years. Not five. Not ten. Two years.

"The human brain is better at taking the imaginative leap to understand the unknown," Goertzel explained. "We should enjoy it for a couple more years."

Whether you believe his timeline or think he's off by a factor of ten, the trajectory is undeniable. AI systems are already outperforming humans at increasingly complex cognitive tasks. The question isn't if — it's when, and more importantly for business owners: what now?

The Uncomfortable Truth About Timelines

I've watched twenty-six years of technological predictions. Most are wrong. But when they're wrong about exponential technologies, they're usually wrong in one direction: too conservative.

Remember when experts said it would take decades for computers to beat grandmasters at chess? IBM's Deep Blue did it in 1997. When they said Go was impossible for machines? AlphaGo conquered that in 2016, years ahead of schedule.

The pattern repeats because we think linearly whilst technology advances exponentially. Each breakthrough doesn't just add capability — it multiplies it.

Goertzel's timeline might be aggressive, but here's what's already happening:

• GPT-4 passes the bar exam

• Claude writes production code

• Midjourney produces commercial-grade imagery

• AI systems diagnose diseases better than doctors in specific domains

These aren't parlour tricks. They're early signals of cognitive superiority in narrow domains. The question is how quickly those domains expand.

The Business Extinction Event

Here's the brutal reality: businesses that survive the next decade won't be the ones with the best products or the strongest brands. They'll be the ones that learned to work with AI before AI learned to work without them.

Think I'm being dramatic? Look at what happened to taxi companies when Uber arrived, or to Blockbuster when Netflix pivoted to streaming. The disruption didn't come from companies doing the same thing slightly better. It came from companies doing something fundamentally different.

AI represents the same category of disruption, but compressed into a much shorter timeframe. When AI can think strategically better than humans, it won't just automate tasks — it will automate entire business functions. Marketing strategies. Product development. Customer service. Even strategic planning itself.

The companies that survive will be those that learned to dance with this technology whilst they still had the chance to lead.

Your 24-Month Action Plan

Stop reading about AI and start using it. Here's what you need to do, ranked by urgency:

Immediate (Next 30 Days)

Audit every role in your company. Which tasks could AI do today? Not perfectly, but adequately enough to free up human time for higher-value work? Start there. Customer service chatbots, content creation, data analysis, scheduling — pick one and implement it properly.

Hire someone who gets it. If you don't have an AI-literate employee, you're already behind. This isn't about hiring a "prompt engineer" — it's about finding someone who understands how to integrate AI tools into business processes.

Medium Term (3-6 Months)

Rebuild your workflows around AI. Don't bolt AI onto your existing processes. That's like trying to put a jet engine on a horse. Instead, ask: if we were building this business today with AI available, how would we do it differently?

Train your entire team. AI literacy isn't optional for technical roles anymore — it's essential for every role. Your accountant should understand AI for financial modelling. Your marketers should know how to use AI for content and analysis. Your customer service team should be AI-augmented, not AI-threatened.

Long Term (6-24 Months)

Become AI-first, not AI-enhanced. This is where most companies will fail. They'll use AI as a productivity boost rather than a fundamental reimagining of how work gets done. The winners will be the companies that build AI so deeply into their operations that removing it would be like removing electricity.

Prepare for the strategic shift. When AI can think strategically, the competitive advantage will shift from execution to vision. Machines will handle the "how" with superhuman efficiency. Humans will need to focus on the "what" and "why" with unprecedented clarity.

The Window Is Closing

Goertzel's two-year prediction might be optimistic. It might be conservative. But here's what's certain: the gap between AI-native businesses and traditional businesses is growing every day.

You have a choice. You can spend the next two years pretending this is just another tech trend, watching from the sidelines as your competitors restructure around AI. Or you can accept that the game has changed and start playing by the new rules.

The businesses that thrive in an AI-dominant world will be the ones that learned to harness this technology before it became ubiquitous. Your window to become AI-literate isn't closing next year. It's closing now.

What are you going to do about it?