A lot of people who work in artificial intelligence are talking about February of 2020.

Because in February 2020, normal life was about to end.

The COVID-19 pandemic response would shut down schools and businesses and travel.

At that point, very few of us had an inkling of what was to come,

but the crisis that would upend American society for years had really been underway

for weeks.

Chinese health officials are trying to identify what's causing a pneumonia outbreak in a southern

city.

And a lot of people in the tech industry are saying that moment for COVID is this moment

for generative AI.

The world is shifting, and we just don't fully

appreciate or understand how much it's happening. They're excited, they're also worried. Take a listen

to Dario Amade, CEO of the AI company Anthropic, talking about his own company's product.

It's possible it'll all be okay, but I think that's, I think that's too sanguine an

approach. I think we do need to be raising the alarm. That is from an interview with CNN. Ambedee

predicts AI may result in 10 to 20 percent unemployment soon, like single-digit years from now soon.

Mustafa Soleiman was even more blunt in an interview with Financial Times. He is the chief

executive of Microsoft AI. I think that we're going to have a human level performance on most,

if not all, professional tasks. So white collar work where you're sitting down at a computer,

either being, you know, a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a

marketing person, most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to

18 months.

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