In 2023 and 2024, boutique consultants could still get paid to explain what a prompt is. In 2025, that window closed.

Executives stopped being impressed by the tool and began to judge the operator. ChatGPT moved from a shiny object to boring infrastructure. The buyers who sign serious checks now assume you can use it. Competence is the floor, not the fee.

Remember web community managers in 2002? These were among the best-paying jobs back then. By the time I organized a Web Managers Roundtable at The World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC, it was already entry-level. It did not die. It got renamed, sliced up, and buried inside other titles. It's the job of volunteers or virtual assistants in free Facebook groups and forums like Slack, Discord, Substack, Circle, or Skool.

ChatGPT-related expertise is facing the same journey into oblivion. Here's why:

1. AI moved from “toy” to the default operating system for knowledge work

Things that matter here:

• ChatGPT hits 700M, then 800M
...

Information is dead. Not dying. Dead. AI now writes faster, analyzes cleaner, and finds patterns that used to take consultants days or weeks. The slide deck you once sold as a deliverable for your $25,000 discovery? A prompt can generate it in 25 seconds.

AI doesn’t just speed up what humans did; it changes what counts as work. It writes faster than any copywriter, builds decks in seconds, and analyzes data without fatigue or bias. It makes “knowing” a commodity.

That means your old selling point, knowing more than your client, is gone. Consultants once sold access to information. You gathered insights from interviews, audits, or benchmarks. Then you packaged them as frameworks and slides that looked exclusive. The client paid because they couldn’t see the whole picture without you.

Now, that picture is generated instantly. AI can produce a polished deck, complete with visual patterns, recommendations, and action plans, before your client even books a discovery call.

So what’s left...