is this the AI apocolypse?

In January 2020 I quit my comfy job in local government emergency planning to pivot my career.

In February 2020 I went to Toronto to visit a friend, and my flight back was canceled because of a staff shortage. Weird... cause this had been happening quite a bit.

When I got home, people were starting to talk about a virus overseas.

Early March 2020, I was talking to a friend who owns a gym, he was planning a big event for September, I suggested he might have to cancel that. He thought I was nuts.

March 9, 2020, I was sitting at a cafe talking to a friend about this “pandemic” and the irony of it all because, when I worked in emergency planning, I regularly educated the public on how to be prepared for disasters.

In my talks, I’d site one possible disaster as the Zombie Apocalypse - if I was lucky, it’d get a laugh in the middle of my very boring doomsday presentation - and I’d tell them, it was actually a very real scenario.

You call it a zombie apocalypse, in emergency preparedness, we call it a ‘global pandemic’ - you know: talk of a virus, staying indoors, avoiding any contact, no cars on the road, no people on the street, uncertainty, fear, and a race for a cure...

I knew what was coming, but everyone thought I was overreacting - I mean, I had been the doomsday, ‘sky is falling’ educator, of course. It was literally my job.

(btw, you can singlehandedly blame me and the emergency preparedness industry for the toilet paper panic; I would regularly remind people to stay stocked up just in case.)

Back to me in the cafe, days before the world “shut down."

I looked down at my phone to see my former boss’s name, from the job I had just left a couple months ago, scroll across my screen. I knew exactly why he was calling before I even picked up the phone.

“Hey Ashley, it’s Scott. As you might be aware, there’s talk about a pandemic. We’re opening up the EOC [Emergency Coordination Centre]. We’ll need all hands on deck. Would you consider coming back to help us?”

This was it. And I knew it. This was the ‘zombie apocalypse’ that we mentioned in educational talks that always got a laugh because that would never happen, right?

So when I read Matt Shumer’s mega-viral post (85M views) and it opened with this exact same picture, this exact scenario that I had personally experience, I deeply felt his sentiment.

I knew exactly what he meant when he said, “this is happening right now and I need you to understand it.” I was sat.

AI really is taking your job.

I use AI in my work a ton, I have to. Clients and employers expectations have increased significantly in terms of speed, scope, quality, and deliverables. Plus my peers/competitors are using it, so I must eat or be eaten.

I spend a lot of time thinking about AI: what to optimize, how to leverage, what to learn, how to keep up — and this past month has left my head spinning.

I also spend a lot of time thinking about the impact of AI - my job, my client’s businesses, my kid’s education (genuinely, how are teachers navigating this?!), their future jobs, my friends jobs.

Shockingly, a majority of people I know still think AI’s best use case is writing a cover letter. Some don’t even use it at all. How do I tell them that AI is 1-2 years away from replacing their job? And not like, their admin tasks, like their entire jobs completely.

But honestly, this is all way out of my league, hence why I was sat for Matt’s viral post.

Like him, I’m not trying to be alarmist. I am genuinely excited about AI (with trepidation). I’ve been doing some really cool stuff in the past few months and feel like I’m gaining significant career traction.

Though here’s where my former emergency planning brain goes...

The difference here from a global crisis, is that there is no coordinated response. When sh*t hits the fan and the public is at risk, all levels of government and large private agencies open their EOC for a coordinated response to protect the public.

But this scenario isn’t on the list alongside fires, floods, and earthquakes. Those are matters of human life and safety.

Matt says himself, these decisions about the development of AI are made by a very small group of people. The rest of us 8 billion sit back and watch it unfold, adjusting our lives (or careers) as necessary - like we did during the pandemic.

I don’t really have a big revelation or advice in all this. I guess I’d align with what Matt’s suggests (refer back to his post for that). For me personally, as my heads spins I’m responding both by adapting and experimenting *and* spending more time offline.

Tbh I want to throw my phone and computer in the ocean most days; my own brain feels like it’s being AI-ified. So I’ve been intentionally taking things slower, doing things analog (gasp!!!), and steeping myself in creative joy just for the sake of it.

This is not any sort of apocalypse but, if you've been living under a rock, we are right in the centre of a big shift. You might want to start stocking up on toilet paper 💩