AI is not merely another technological leap—it may be the moment machines begin to eclipse the very human talents that built our world.
n 1999, I had the privilege of working for one of the first companies to develop a product that would transmit video on the fledgling internet. Broadband access was still a few years away, and the company floundered when the first so-called internet bubble burst in early 2000. But I’ll never forget the reaction an investor had when he viewed our demo at a tradeshow.
“This is a revolution,” he exclaimed. “This is going to change everything.”
He was right, of course. I remember attending a tech investor conference only a few years earlier and having a chuckle while listening to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison somberly proclaim that the dawning internet was the most profound scientific development in human history “since the invention of fire.”
And Ellison was also correct. But the invention of AI is to the internet what the internet was to bringing fire into the prehistoric cave. What’s coming with AI makes the internet look like a baby step by comparison. Nothing will ever be the same.
A must-read essay by AI entrepreneur and founder of the company “OthersideAI,” Matt Shumer, makes clear just how much and how quickly AI is changing our lives. Posted on his personal website on February 9 and then on X on February 10, the essay has gone viral. Within just two days, it generated 76 million views on X. One of Shumer’s most memorable paragraphs from this essay, which he says AI tools helped him write, is where he quotes Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic: