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AI tools risk replacing team collaboration with 'massive parallel play'

Insight: According to Microsoft's Jess Holbrook (speaking on Design Better Podcast), AI tools are accelerating individual designers but eroding team collaboration. Each contributor runs different models with different prompts, producing 'massive parallel play' — work that races forward in isolated directions and resists handoff or shared iteration.

Detail: Holbrook argues this is a coordination problem AI tools are making worse, not better: democratized capability lets individuals span disciplines, but the team-level integrative work that turns parallel outputs into coherent products is regressing. Single anecdotal source from a podcast; treat as an early signal worth watching, not a confirmed pattern.

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