‘Something Big Is Happening’: The quiet AI revolution is no longer quiet

Think back to February 2020. If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren't paying close attention. The stock market was doing great, your kids were in school, you were going to restaurants and shaking hands and planning trips.

If someone told you they were stockpiling toilet paper you would have thought they'd been spending too much time on a weird corner of the internet. Then, over the course of about three weeks, the entire world changed.

I think we're in the “this seems overblown” phase of something much, much bigger than Covid.

I've spent six years building an AI startup and investing in the space. I live in this world. And I'm writing this for the people in my life who don't — my family, my friends, the people I care about who keep asking me “so what's the deal with AI?” and getting an answer that doesn't do justice to what's actually happening. I keep giving them the polite version. Because the honest version sounds like I've lost my mind.

But the gap between what I've been saying and what is actually happening has gotten far too big.

I should be clear about something up front: even though I work in AI, I have almost no influence over what's about to happen. The future is being shaped by a remarkably small number of people: a few hundred researchers at a handful of companies.

A single training run, managed by a small team over a few months, can produce an AI system that shifts the entire trajectory of the tech-nology. We're watching this unfold the same as you. We just happen to be close enough to feel the ground shake first. I know this is real because it happened to me first.

The reason so many people in the industry are sounding the alarm right now is because this al-ready happened to us. We're not making predictions. We're telling you what already occurred in our own jobs, and warning you that you're next.

For years, AI had been improving steadily. Then in 2025, new techniques unlocked a much faster pace of progress. Each new model wasn't just better — it was better by a wider margin, and the time between releases was shorter.

On February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day. And something clicked. I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just appears. Not a rough draft.

The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away for hours, and come back to find the work done — done better than I would have done it myself.

I'll tell the AI: “I want to build this app. Here's what it should do.” It figures out the user flow, the design, all of it. It writes tens of thousands of lines of code. Then it opens the app itself. It tests it. If it doesn't like how something feels, it changes it. It iterates until it's satisfied. Only then does it come back and say: “It's ready.”

That is what my Monday looked like. The model released last week shook me the most. It wasn't just executing instructions. It was making intelligent decisions. It had something that felt like judgment. Like taste.

These aren't incremental improvements. This is a different thing entirely.

Why this matters to you

The labs focused on making AI great at writing code first because building AI requires code. If AI can write that code, it can help build the next version of itself. A smarter version builds an even smarter version.

They've now done it. And they're moving on to everything else. The experience tech workers have had — watching AI go from “helpful tool” to “does my job better than I do” — is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law. Finance. Medicine. Accounting. Consulting. Writing. Design. Customer service. Not in ten years. One to five. Possibly less.

If you tried AI in 2023 or early 2024 and thought “this isn't impressive,” you were right. That was two years ago. In AI time, that is ancient history. The models available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago.

Anyone still arguing that progress is slowing either hasn't used current models or is evaluating based on an outdated experience. Most people are also using free versions. The free tier is over a year behind what paying users have access to. Judging AI based on that is like evaluating smartphones using a flip phone.

The people ahead in their industries — the ones actually experimenting — are not dismissing this. They're blown away. And they're positioning themselves accordingly.

How fast this is moving

In 2022, AI couldn't do basic arithmetic reliably. By 2023, it could pass the bar exam. By 2024, it could write working software and explain graduate-level science. By late 2025, some of the best engineers in the world had handed over most of their coding work to AI. On February 5th, 2026, new models arrived that made everything before them feel like a differ-ent era.

If you haven't tried AI in the last few months, what exists today would be unrecognizable to you. If current trends hold, we're looking at AI that can work independently for days within a year. Weeks within two. Month-long projects within three.

If AI is smarter than most PhDs, do you really think it can't do most office jobs?

AI is now building the next AI

OpenAI stated that its latest model was instrumental in creating itself — debugging its own training, managing deployment, diagnosing results. The AI helped build itself.

This is not a future prediction. It's happening now. Each generation helps build the next, which builds the next faster. The researchers call this an intelligence explosion. And the people building it believe the process has already started.

What this means for your job

One major AI CEO has publicly predicted that AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. Many think that's conservative. This is different from previous automation.

AI isn't replacing one skill. It's a general substitute for cognitive work. It improves at everything simultaneously. If your job happens on a screen — reading, writing, analyzing, deciding — AI is coming for sig-nificant parts of it. The timeline isn't someday. It's already started.

What you should do

The biggest advantage you can have right now is being early. Use AI seriously. Use the best models available. Don't treat it like a search engine. Push it into your real work. Give it the tasks that take you the most time. If it even kind of works today, it will work extremely well soon.

This might be the most important year of your career. There's a brief window where most people are still ignoring this. The person who shows what AI can do right now becomes invaluable.

Have no ego about it. The people who will struggle most are the ones who refuse to engage. Get your financial house in order. Build flexibility. Give yourself options. Teach your kids adaptability, curiosity, and how to work with these tools — not how to optimize for a career path that may not exist.

And remember the upside. Barriers to building, learning, and creating are collapsing. The best tutor in the world is now available to anyone. The tools to build things are cheap. Try the things you've been putting off.

Build the habit of adapting. Spend time experimenting. Get comfortable being a beginner repeat-edly. That adaptability is the closest thing to a durable advantage that exists right now.

What I know

I know this isn't a fad. I know the next few years are going to be disorienting. I know the people who start engaging now will come out ahead. And I know you deserve to hear this from some-one who cares about you — not from a headline when it's too late. The future is already here. It just hasn't knocked on your door yet.

(An extract from X posted by CEO, Hyperwrite)