I feel really panicked about AI

I joined Google 10 years ago from government. Over the decade, I was immersed in the world of tech, from digital marketing to cloud computing to app development. We all have this joy of learning when you discover something new - I had it all the time. Until a few years ago, when that joy turned into stress and inferiority. The development in AI over the past years has been at such an unprecedented rate that I don't just feel tired trying to catch up on the latest models, I have this strong feeling of FOMO that I'm going to lag behind.

So I started to read more books about AI and AI safety outside of my job, watched YouTube videos about agents, and tried to integrate AI models into my daily work. Eventually I left my job at Google so I could spare more time to learn. Yes, you read that right - leaving a job in tech to learn tech.

I feel really panicked about how this is going to turn out.

What is happening in tech right now

During my last two years at Google, I witnessed something disturbing unfold. Ever since the layoff in 2023 where 12,000 colleagues disappeared overnight, everyone is made aware that this is going to be the new normal. Long gone are the days with psychological safety, and welcome to metrics and survival for the fittest. In all hands we talked about how AI has been rapidly integrated into products and internal processes with enthusiasm, but nobody is willing to shed light on how this will impact team structure and how we might be building technologies to make us redundant. When I first joined Google there’s a global team of support specialists helping with customer queries about ads issues, now it is replaced by this AI support assistant.

Planning is also nonexistent. Q3 used to be the busy season for annual planning. But now, annual plans are constantly overridden by new tech realities (for good reason I suppose). For most people, it’s not even possible to imagine if their role is still relevant in the next week. I cannot count how many of my work counterparts have been impacted by re-orgs and layoffs over the past year.

If you think this is over-exaggerating, see how OpenAI and Anthropic think about it:

“The future will be coming at us in a way that is impossible to ignore, and the long-term changes to our society and economy will be huge.” Sam Altman

““Powerful AI” could arrive as soon as 2026.” Dario Amodei

What I observed in businesses and founders

For the companies I work with, most of them know what is coming ahead of them, even though their reactions may vary. Large corporations, due to its legacy structure, are less agile to transform and adopt new technologies. My friend at a Fortune 500 told me that leaders encouraged them to utilise AI so that it could optimise 5% of work (which I think is quite understated). Small businesses on the other hand, are already drastically optimising and improving processes with AI. At the same time, AI has empowered a lot of new businesses and made possible solopreneurships.

The terrifying disconnect

What disturbs me most isn’t the evolution of AI, but the disconnect with people on the other side of the world. Most people, especially the less tech savvy generations, are in the stage of playing with ChatGPT for general queries as a replacement for Google. A lot believe that their industry or work are “too complex” for AI. Many of them plan to look into AI “someday” or “when it’s more mature”. Almost none of people I spoke with think that AGI could be arriving over the coming 5 years. To them, the world has been remaining largely the same over the past decades, and it’s impossible for something to overturn it next day. Except that it’s already happening.

What I'm seeing now:

• marketing teams replacing content teams with ChatGPT & Mid Journey
• customer service centres becoming AI monitoring stations
• junior developer roles replaced by AI who write codes better than developers with years of experiences
• middle managers replaced by AI advising marketing strategies better than seasoned executives

The truth nobody wants to say: Most of us are not special. Most of our work is not irreplaceable. And AI is at the worst it will ever be.

What I’m actually doing about it

Winter is coming, and I'm not going to pretend I have answers to this AI wave. But here's what I'm trying to do differently:

• stop believing in “safe” careers
• stop planning beyond 2 years
• trying to be proficient in AI instead of “competing” with it
• radical experimentation: constantly test and pivot my career
• spend as much time as possible developing my interests, and align my work to it
• find my “why”, ie what life means to me when work become worthless

However, there’s couple questions that keep me up at night, and I hope it will be answered some day:

• at which point will tech and government stop pushing AI development to optimise for profits, but cooperate for the safety of humanity on an international level?
• what will happen to society when every company operates as a solopreneur with AI?
• what is the meaning of education when AI knows and teaches everything?
• what will happen when traditional employment ends entirely and universal basic income becomes necessary?
• what happen to human ambition and purpose when AI does everything better?

A lot of people talks about what AI means for your business. I think we need to address the elephant in the room: what does AI means to your life, society and humanity? When work no longer defines us, who do you want to become?