Theatrical? You bet. Looking for an audience? Who knows. But when someone waves the “February 2020” flag and suggests AI is about to rearrange civilization in three weeks, I have to step in. Now breathe in, hold, breathe out. Being in Texas, we know the smell of a feedlot when the wind shifts — and this one carries more methane than meaning.
The world is not ending. AI is not coming to devour humanity. It may become a better cop, a sharper analyst, and a more ruthless auditor of inefficiency. It may even streamline bureaucracies so hard that overhead shrinks instead of metastasizes. That possibility alone explains some of the emotional volume surrounding the debate.
The Historical Pattern Everyone Forgets
Every meaningful technology has been a two-edged sword. Oil drilling built mobility and industry, but it also concentrated power. Electric light extended productive hours and rewired society. Internal combustion mechanized farming and expanded output, while boom-bust cycles followed close behind. Flight gave us mercy missions and strategic bombing in the same century.
Am I the only one who actually read Tainter and Diamond?
The pattern is not new. Tools amplify human intention; they do not replace it. The same species that builds hospitals builds battlefields. Pretending AI is the first dangerous tool in history requires either selective memory or selective marketing.
What’s Actually Real
The pace of AI improvement has accelerated. Tools that were toys in 2023 are legitimate work partners in 2026. Coding productivity is up, drafting velocity is up, and research friction is dramatically lower. If your job lives on a screen — reading, writing, analyzing, deciding — AI is already touching it.
I use it daily. My output is higher, my error rate is lower, and my experimentation cycle is faster. But here’s the quiet truth missing from viral panic essays: capability does not equal economic replacement. We’ve seen this movie before, and the ending was not extinction.
Spreadsheets did not eliminate accountants. Email did not eliminate managers. Search engines did not eliminate researchers. They eliminated mediocre throughput and amplified high performers. AI is the next force multiplier — nothing mystical, nothing apocalyptic.
The “I’m No Longer Needed” Narrative
The emotional hook making the rounds is this: “I describe what I want, and it just appears.” In narrow domains, that’s true. But that sentence hides the real requirement — you must know what to ask, recognize when the output is wrong, and decide what matters. Judgment is not typing. Taste is not syntax. Strategy is not autocomplete.
I don’t fear AI writing 100,000 lines of code. I fear humans who stop understanding what those lines do. The risk is not machine competence; it’s human complacency.
The Recursive Loop Panic
Yes, AI helps build AI. So did earlier generations of tools help refine their successors. Bridgeport mills helped build assembly lines; assembly lines built the industrial backbone of the 20th century. Computers helped design better computers. Tool recursion is not a new discovery.
What matters is separating improvement velocity from civilization-replacement mythology. The first is happening. The second is extrapolation theater. Engineers understand that upward curves encounter friction, gravity, politics, and regulation. They always do.
The Job Question (Without Drama)
Will entry-level white-collar work shrink? Yes. It already is. But every tool shift creates new layers of coordination, compliance, integration, and oversight. AI does not sign court filings — a licensed human does. AI does not assume liability — organizations and individuals do.
Responsibility chains still govern the real world. What disappears first is low-skill, repeatable, screen-bound throughput. What grows is the AI-augmented operator who understands both domain expertise and machine leverage. That is evolution, not extinction.
Why the February 2020 Analogy Fails
Covid was an external shock. AI is an internal acceleration. Covid forced compliance overnight; AI requires adoption. It does not lock your doors or confiscate your keyboard. It waits for you to use it.
Adoption curves lag capability curves. That lag buys time. And time is the most valuable asset in a transition cycle.
What I Actually Tell People
Strip out the theatrics and here’s the playbook. Get competent with AI now. Use the best models, not the free tier demo. Apply it to real work, not trivia. Preserve your judgment and build financial resilience so you have options if disruption accelerates.
Reduce unnecessary debt. Stay physically capable. Deepen human relationships, because leverage without trust is brittle. Experiment daily so adaptation becomes muscle memory instead of emergency reaction.
Notice what’s missing? Panic.
We are not facing an asteroid. We are facing leverage. If you are on the bus, you compound. If you stand in front of it screaming, you get flattened.
The Surveillance Question
There is one area that deserves sharper scrutiny. AI can make bureaucracies more efficient — processing more data, detecting patterns faster, and enforcing compliance at scale. Used wisely, that reduces waste. Used poorly, it concentrates control.
That tension is political and civic, not technical destiny. Fear-based overregulation can cripple usefulness just as reckless acceleration can cause harm. Guardrails matter, but over-guardrails strangle innovation. The balance will define the next decade.
The Hidden Opportunity
The alarmists accidentally reveal something true: barriers to building have collapsed. Want to write a book? You can. Prototype software? You can. Analyze markets faster or test ideas at low cost? You can.
The moat is no longer technical execution. The moat is clarity of thought. Clear thinkers win in multiplier cycles.
The Real Risk
The real danger is not AI replacing humans. The danger is humans outsourcing cognition prematurely. If we stop learning, stop reasoning, and stop building internal models, we become brittle. That is a cultural decision, not a machine inevitability.
AI is a wrench. It is not a deity.
My Bottom Line
We are not in February 2020. We are in 1994 internet. Early adopters built empires. Dismissers missed opportunity. Panickers made poor decisions.
This is a multiplier cycle. The disciplined win. The curious win. The adaptable win. The hysterical burn out.
I will continue using AI daily. I will continue writing. I will continue thinking independently. Real engineers don’t cower — they build.
Don’t like real work and real thinking? Have a nice walk with the Digital Anasazi.
~ Anti-Dave