Matt Shumer’s Something Big Is Happening has made the rounds over the last couple of weeks, but just in case you haven’t seen it, I think it’s very much worth reading. He’s an AI startup founder writing for the non-technical people in his life:

AI isn’t replacing one specific skill. It’s a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously. When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn’t leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it’s improving at that too.

Previous waves of automation always left somewhere to go. The uncomfortable implication here is that the escape routes are closing as fast as they open.

There are too many quotes worth commenting on, but this observation about what we tell our kids feels important:

The people most likely to thrive are the ones who are deeply curious, adaptable, and effective at using AI to do things they actually care about. Teach your kids to be builders and learners, not to optimize for a career path that might not exist by the time they graduate.

Predictions about the pace of change tend to be simultaneously too aggressive and too conservative in ways that are hard to anticipate. But the direction feels right, and the practical advice is sound: use the tools seriously, don’t assume they can’t do something just because it seems too hard, and spend your energy adapting rather than debating whether this is real.