AI, What’s Going On, Explained
For four decades, I’ve been the TechWhisperer. I’d listen to all the nonsensical (to the average person) TechSpeak, and then translate, “Here’s what that means to you.”
I have been replaced. Not by AI. By Matt Shumer, Founder and CEO of OthersideAI. He builds AI products, invests in the infrastructure behind them, and writes about what he’s seeing, usually before it’s obvious. He recently posted a nearly 5,000-word brilliant blog piece explaining what’s going on in AI and how it affects you.
The following are his words. I just edited and cut them for brevity, and inserted another “What that means to you” at the bottom.
Velocity of AI’s Change, Simple and Clear
- In 2022, AI couldn’t reliably do basic arithmetic. It would confidently say 7 × 8 = 54.
- By 2023, it could pass the bar exam.
- By 2024, it could write working software, and explain graduate-level science.
- By late 2025, some of the best engineers in the world have handed most of their coding work over to AI.
- On February 5th, 2026, new models arrived that made everything before them feel like a different era.
- (At this rate), Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has said that by late 2026 or 2027, AI models will be “substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks.”
“But I tried AI, and it wasn’t that good.”
The problem is that most people are using the free version of AI tools. The free version is over a year behind what paying users have access to. The models available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago. Judging AI based on free-tier ChatGPT is like evaluating the state of smartphones by using a flip phone.
This Might Be the Most Important Year of Your Career
Work accordingly. Because right now there is a brief window where most people at most companies are still ignoring this. The person who walks into a meeting and says “I used AI to do this analysis in an hour instead of three days” is going to be the most valuable person in the room. Not eventually. Right now. If you’re early enough, this is how you move up: By being the person who understands what’s coming and can show others how to navigate it. That window won’t stay open long. Once everyone figures it out, that advantage disappears.
Lean Into Whatever About You is Hardest to Replace
Some things will take longer for AI to displace, if ever. Relationships and trust built over years. Roles where someone still has to sign off, take responsibility, and maybe stand in a courtroom with licensed accountability. Industries with heavy regulatory hurdles, where adoption will be slowed by compliance, liability, and institutional inertia. None of these are permanent shields. But they buy time. And time, right now, is the most valuable thing you can have, as long as you use it to adapt, not to pretend this isn’t happening.
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Rethink What You’re Telling Your Kids
The standard playbook: Get good grades, go to a good college, land a stable job. Gone. But the people most likely to thrive are the ones who are deeply curious, adaptable, and effective at using AI to do things they actually care about. Teach your kids to be builders and learners, not to optimize for a career path that might not exist by the time they graduate.
Build the Habit of Adapting
This is maybe most important. The specific tools don’t matter as much as the muscle of learning new ones quickly. The people who come out of this well won’t be the ones who mastered one tool. They’ll be the ones who got comfortable with the pace of change itself. Make a habit of experimenting. Get comfortable being a beginner repeatedly. That adaptability is the closest thing to a durable advantage that exists right now.
Here’s a simple commitment that will put you ahead of almost everyone: Spend one hour a day experimenting with AI. Not passively reading about it. Using it. Every day, try to get it to do something new. Try a new tool. Give it a harder problem. One hour a day, every day. If you do this for the next six months, you will understand what’s coming better than 99% of the people around you. That’s not an exaggeration. Almost nobody is doing this right now. The bar is on the floor.
Pursue Your Dreams
So many barriers to building and creating are gone. You can have a working version of an idea in just an hour. Pursue the things you’re passionate about. You never know where they’ll lead. And in a world where the old career paths are getting disrupted, the person who spent a year building something they love could end up better positioned than the person who spent that year clinging to a job description.
Here’s What All That Means to You
(Back to BillSpeak...) Your future is in your hands, not AI’s. Take Matt’s advice, build the habit of adapting and you’ll be able to write your own ticket. Go wherever you want to go. But act fast. As Matt says, “This is already happening in my world. It’s coming to yours. The future is already here. It just hasn’t knocked on your door yet. It’s about to.”
Bill Jensen is a seasoned strategy and transformation executive, advisor to C-suite execs, globally-known keynote speaker, and author of nine best-selling leadership and change books, including Simplicity, Disrupt, Future Strong, and The Day Tomorrow Said No. Reach him at bill@simplerwork.com.
Bill Jensen I stood before mature students this week explaining that most of their textbook is already history. They rationalised that current trends wouldn't affect their traditional industrial-age organisations. I understand their view. Even my Gen Z students struggle when I suggest many are 'prisoners' of the course, gaining degrees but heading towards unemployment, whilst 'volunteers' actively developing across disciplines with future-oriented mindsets will likely prosper. Universities remain causation processes: predict then execute. Prisoners can still succeed if they memorise what's in the books. But using an effectuation approach then co-creating through committed action requires voluntary engagement, not compliance. In my forthcoming book Beyond the Org Chart, I dedicate three chapters to the future of work, followed by why and how education must change. Understanding AI is just one part of the challenge. Breaking down hundreds of years of Taylorism, work as obedience, learning as extraction, and people as resources is the hardest part. This is daily life we are challenging. The question isn't "What skills do I need?" It's "Am I prisoner or volunteer?" The answer will help to unlock the future.
This isn’t just a skills shift. It’s a power shift. For decades, advantage lived in access to information and analysis. That advantage is evaporating. When cognition becomes abundant, hierarchy built on “who knows” starts to crack. The edge now moves to: * Who reframes faster * Who redesigns work, not just accelerates it * Who turns AI into leverage, not output You’re right about the window. It’s real. But the bigger move isn’t becoming better at using AI inside the current model. It’s having the courage to question the model itself. Always appreciate how you make the future usable.