The AI World Sounds the Alarm
Something has shifted in the AI world, and the people closest to the technology are the ones most unsettled by it.
Top safety experts at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other leading AI companies are warning — loudly and publicly — that the technology they're building is advancing faster than anyone anticipated. Some are quitting, and others are speaking out.
“Here's the thing nobody outside of tech quite understands yet: the reason so many people in the industry are sounding the alarm right now is because this already happened to us. We're not making predictions. We're telling you what already occurred in our own jobs, and warning you that you're next.” — Matt Schumer
The moment that captured the most attention came from entrepreneur Matt Shumer, whose essay titled “Something Big Is Happening” compared the current moment to the eve of COVID-19. It racked up nearly 70 million views on X in 36 hours, urging people to recognize that AI is on the verge of fundamentally reshaping careers and daily life.
“I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just . . . appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.” — Matt Schumer
What's driving the anxiety? Recent breakthroughs show that the latest AI models can now build complex products on their own — and then improve those products without human involvement. OpenAI's most recent model helped train itself. Anthropic's Cowork tool built itself. Researchers say we’re getting closer to what they call an intelligence explosion.
“. . . nothing that can be done on a computer is safe in the medium term. If your job happens on a screen (if the core of what you do is reading, writing, analyzing, deciding, communicating through a keyboard) then AI is coming for significant parts of it. The timeline isn't ‘someday.’ It's already started.” — Matt Schumer
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