By Futurist Thomas Frey
How AI Changes Everything About Groundbreaking Accomplishments
We’re obsessed with firsts. The first person on the moon. The first to fly. The first to run a four-minute mile. These milestones cement legacies and inspire generations. But AI is fundamentally changing what it means to be “first” and whether humans will claim many future firsts at all.
My “Tool of Firsts” has always been about using our desire to go first as a mapping tool for future accomplishments. Every emerging technology produces related firsts that help us understand the technology’s benefits, strengths, limitations, and perspective. The first person to set foot on Mars. The first to cure cancer. The first trillionaire. These firsts help us work backward from desirable futures to understand what needs to happen to get there.
But in the AI era, many firsts we assumed would be human achievements might be claimed by machines instead. And that changes not just who gets credit, but whether the accomplishment means what we thought it would mean.
When Machines Claim the Firsts We Reserved for Humans
Consider the firsts still waiting to be claimed. First to cure Alzheimer’s—will that be a human researcher or an AI system that identified the treatment pathway? First legal case presided over by an AI judge—that’s explicitly a machine first, but what about the first case where AI’s legal reasoning proves superior to human judges? First to communicate with plants—will that be a human breakthrough or an AI pattern recognition system identifying plant communication signals humans couldn’t detect?
The most significant shift is that AI doesn’t just help humans achieve firsts—it claims firsts independently. AlphaFold was the first to accurately predict protein structures at scale. GPT was the first to generate human-quality text at scale. These aren’t tools that helped humans be first—these are machines being first themselves.
This creates an uncomfortable question: do we still care about firsts when machines achieve them? The first AI to compose a symphony that moves audiences to tears—does that milestone carry the same weight as when Beethoven did it? The first AI to prove a major mathematical theorem—does that inspire us the same way a human mathematician achieving it would?
The Tool of Firsts as Strategic Framework Still Works
Despite AI changing who achieves firsts, the Tool of Firsts remains powerful for mapping future accomplishments. The difference is that we now need to ask different questions: Which firsts will be human? Which will be machine? Which will be human-AI collaboration so intertwined we can’t separate the contributions?
Looking at plausible next firsts through this lens reveals the transformation. First person to ride across the U.S. in a driverless vehicle—that’s a human milestone enabled by AI. First to control gravity—that could be human discovery, AI breakthrough, or collaborative achievement. First globally elected leader—human achievement, but probably elected through AI-optimized campaigns that make human agency questionable.
The Tool of Firsts helps us work backward from desirable futures, but now we need to include the question: “Do we want humans to be first in this domain, or is machine superiority acceptable?” That’s not a question previous generations needed to ask.
The Firsts That Might Disappear Entirely
Some traditional firsts may become meaningless in the AI era. First to memorize 10,000 digits of pi? Irrelevant when AI can process billions of digits instantly. First to calculate complex mathematical operations mentally? Pointless when AI is always faster and more accurate. First to speak 20 languages fluently? Less impressive when AI provides real-time translation.
We’re entering an era where human firsts get compressed into domains where human experience matters more than capability. First to experience something. First to express something emotionally. First to synthesize insights in ways that resonate with human values even if AI could technically perform the synthesis faster.
This isn’t necessarily worse, but it’s fundamentally different. The firsts that remain meaningful will be the ones where being human adds something machines cannot replicate, not just accomplishments that require capability humans once uniquely possessed.
Using the Tool of Firsts to Navigate AI Disruption
The Tool of Firsts becomes even more valuable in the AI era as a way to map which human capabilities remain relevant and which become obsolete. By identifying meaningful firsts still available to humans versus firsts machines will inevitably claim first, we can guide education, career development, and research priorities.
Ask yourself: What firsts do I want to achieve in my lifetime? Which of those firsts are still achievable by humans? Which require human achievement to be meaningful? Which would I be satisfied with achieving through human-AI collaboration?
For organizations, the Tool of Firsts helps identify which breakthroughs to pursue with human talent versus AI systems versus integrated teams. Some firsts justify pure human effort because the human achievement is the point. Others should be handed to AI immediately because human competition is pointless. Most fall somewhere between, requiring strategic decisions about how to balance human and machine contributions.
The Firsts That Still Matter
Despite AI transformation, certain firsts will always carry unique weight when humans achieve them. First human to set foot on Mars matters in ways that the first robot on Mars doesn’t, even though robots got there first. First human to establish permanent off-world settlement. First to make contact with alien intelligence. First to achieve radical life extension. These remain human firsts because the human experience is inseparable from the achievement.
The challenge is distinguishing between firsts that are meaningful because humans did them versus firsts that are meaningful regardless of who or what achieved them. Curing cancer matters whether humans or AI do it. Humans being the ones who cure it adds historical interest but doesn’t change the value of cancer being cured.
After all, the power of being first has always been about pushing human progress forward, about expanding what’s possible, about inspiring others to reach further. In the AI era, that motivation remains even as who gets to be “first” becomes increasingly complicated to determine.
Final Thoughts
The Tool of Firsts remains powerful for mapping future accomplishments and working backward to understand what needs to happen to achieve desirable futures. But AI forces us to expand the framework: Are we mapping human firsts, machine firsts, or collaborative achievements? Does it matter who’s first if the accomplishment advances civilization?
The firsts still waiting to be claimed—curing diseases, controlling gravity, reaching Mars, communicating with non-human intelligence—will increasingly be achieved through human-AI collaboration so intertwined that attribution becomes meaningless. The question isn’t whether to use the Tool of Firsts but how to adapt it for an era where being first means something fundamentally different than it meant for previous generations.
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When AI Co-Authors Your Nobel Prize: The Coming Crisis in Recognizing Human Achievement
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