The power companies have their AI. The Fortune 500 suits have theirs. And the guy wiring a basement in Baltimore? He’s still hunting for a pen. That’s the gap the new Forbes piece won’t admit aloud, so I will.
The Grid Got Smarter—Your Desk Didn’t
Energy traders in Houston now bark orders at neural nets that juggle megawatts the way cardsharps handle decks. The machines spot price spikes before the coffee gets cold. Good for them. But three states away, a freelance designer finishes a logo at midnight and spends another forty minutes fiddling with line items in Word. One grid prints money; the other prints headaches.
“AI is shifting from experiment to essential infrastructure,” the Forbes council writes. Essential for whom, exactly?
Follow the Money—It’s Not Following You
Enterprise budgets soaked up $18 billion in AI spend last quarter. Freelancers? They got another dashboard. Same song, new verse. The energy sector’s algorithms negotiate supply contracts in milliseconds; a solo consultant still chases $600 through email threads titled “Re: Re: Invoice #Final-FINAL.”
Invoice Gini cuts the circus. You type, “Bill Acme two grand for the website, net 15,” and a clean PDF lands in your client’s inbox before you refill the mug. No menus, no math, no mercy for late payers—just results. Invoice Gini keeps the robots on your side for once.
Three Truths the Press Release Leaves Out
- Adoption is top-down. Corporations buy AI the way they buy congressmen—early and in bulk.
- Data hunger grows sideways. The more juice an algorithm saves for Chevron, the more paperwork it dumps on the little guy.
- If you can’t code, you’d better converse. Natural-language tools are the only shovel left in the shed.
A Reporter’s Memo to the Self-Employed
Stop waiting for permission. The same breakthrough that balances wind turbines can balance your books—just pick the tool built for your vocabulary, not theirs. Talk to the machine like it owes you money, because it does. And remember: if the client says, “Send another copy of the invoice,” that’s a computer problem now, not yours.