Something Big Is Happening. Highly recommended reading. It might seem a bit lengthy but definitely worth it.
The author's intention is to invoke preparedness rather than just fearmongering. I can confirm I had a similar feeling about the newer models being so good that they can do the same job as me, much faster and better. I will say, though, that getting them to be that good is a skill in itself.
Here are the key highlights from the essay:
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"The gap between public perception and current reality is now enormous, and that gap is dangerous because it's preventing people from preparing". This is true, most people in my circle have little to no idea about the rapid improvement in AI in the last few months. As the author says, this is mostly because of their prior experience from 2023/2024 or because they use the free version.
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"I think the honest answer is that 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". I agree, especially because he says "... coming for significant parts of it".
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"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". Makes a lot of sense. The ability to use AI to its full potential is valuable. The bottleneck is not the AI itself; it is the uninformed human with a lack of imagination.
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"Make a habit of experimenting. Try new things even when the current thing is working. Get comfortable being a beginner repeatedly. That adaptability is the closest thing to a durable advantage that exists right now". This is also the best way to develop the valuable skill of using AI to its full potential.
And this is the most important takeaway:
"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... something you haven't tried before, something you're not sure it can handle. 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."
This commitment is something I made to myself at the beginning of the year (long before this essay was published). I began to feel a sense of urgency but not the FOMO kind. I was okay with having this feeling because it would push me to use all these tools, experiment with new models and keep up to date with everything happening in AI. The goal is to become a power user of AI.