Before the internet, it was easy to believe that the biggest barrier to growth was a lack of knowledge. Information was scarce. If only everyone had access to the right books, courses, or experts, more people would succeed.

Then the internet happened.

For the first time in history, almost all of human knowledge became available to almost everyone, virtually for free. Yet most people didn’t suddenly become more successful. The internet didn’t just make information accessible. It revealed that information was never the real bottleneck.

So the conversation changed.

People started saying, “Knowledge isn’t enough. The real barrier is skill. Some people have specialized skills. Some people are simply smart enough to learn things like coding.”

But really?

Now AI is doing to skills what the internet did to information.

You no longer need years to become productive in many technical fields. AI can write code, explain concepts, brainstorm ideas, design interfaces, and solve problems for you. It compresses years of learning into hours or days.

As someone who’s spending hours every week vibe coding, building personal utility apps and also enterprise software (I’m saying this after building, entirely through vibe coding, an alternative to the Chatbase chatbot my company has relied on for the past two years) I’m watching something fascinating happen in real time.

People who once believed they couldn’t build software because they didn’t know how to code now have AI doing most of the heavy lifting. The technical barrier no longer exists.

Yet most of them still won’t build, not because they lack information or skill, but because they won’t take the first step, stay consistent, or keep going once the excitement fades.

That’s what AI is exposing.

Every major technological leap strips away another excuse. The internet stripped away the information excuse. AI is stripping away the skill excuse.

We’re discovering that the biggest bottleneck was never external.

It was internal.

Drive.