A Slow Thinker’s Guide to Surviving the AI Apocalypse
https://twitter.com/mattshumer_/status/2021256989876109403
Last week, this thread by Matt Shumer went viral and ricocheted through my group chats. The pacing was thriller-novel tight, the emotional hooks were deep, and the argument felt terrifyingly inevitable. The reaction from my friends was universal: “Oh shit.”
The logic goes like this: New Blackwell-trained models (Opus 4.6, Codex 5.3) are a step change. Because they code well, screen work is dead. Self-improvement loops are real. Therefore, mass unemployment is imminent.
For 24 hours, I sat in that familiar stew of tech-induced anxiety. I felt like I had two choices: surrender to the algorithm or live in a cave.
But here’s the thing: I grew up in a household of geniuses where I was arguably the human equivalent of a dial-up modem. I am slow. But, being the slowest person in the room has a hidden perk: while everyone else is sprinting toward the conclusion, I’m often the one staring at the map, and at times noticing the bridge is unguarded.
So, I started looking for plot holes.
First, the author leaps from capability to deployment with the grace of a gazelle, but the logic lands with a thud. Just because a model can do the job, doesn’t mean an enterprise – stuck together with duct tape and legacy code – adopts it next Tuesday. The narrative conveniently ignores the “Verification Tax.” If it takes me just as long to verify the AI’s code as it does to write it, the revolution is going to be stuck in buffering mode for a while (like my brain).
Second, they treat job loss as the only economic outcome. As Connor Boyack points out, that is myopic.
https://twitter.com/cboyack/status/2021647373571862952
Businesses don’t just want to cut costs; they want to increase Enterprise Value. If an LLM makes me 10x faster, a smart business doesn’t fire me; they use that leverage to do 10x more work.
…we are living in a petri dish of the future. Some of us are hopeful. Some of us are terrified. Most of us are both, often in the same hour. And into that vacuum of uncertainty there is a torrent of speculation dressed up as prophecy.
There is a thrill in dismantling a prophecy to find the speculation underneath.
So, here is my spiritual spin on the “end of the world:”
Uncertainty causes anxiety. That’s natural. But don’t let a viral thread frame your reality. Don’t jump to the shortest, scariest conclusion.
Give yourself permission to be curious instead of terrified. Be experimental. Change your mind six times before lunch. Anxiety never helped anyone make a good decision, so use this moment to play.
If it’s fun, you’re winning. Keep Calm and Tinker On.
🙏
p.s. I also recommend you follow some of the links in Om’s post as it also puts into question some of the reasons why these extrapolations and generalizations from the specific author can is also sus.
#ai #anthropic #building #claude #Codex #coding #gemini #google #llm #openai #opus #products #software #softwareDevelopment #tech #technology
