This past week, while I was getting my haircut, I shared with my stylist that my son was returning from college for Thanksgiving. “Where is he going to school?” she asked. “The University of Washington” I said proudly. “Good school. what’s he studying?” she said. “Computer science,” I proclaim. “Oh…” she said, a bit concerned. “Aren’t lots of tech workers out of work?”
For a moment the conversation got a little awkward. Did I detect a bit of schadenfreude in her voice? Did I sound defensive when I responded with something like “there are still lots of jobs in tech… lots of companies are hiring.” We were both quiet for a minute before turning to another topic. But that feeling of awkwardness and uncertainty captures how I feel when I think about the disruption AI will likely bring.
Larry Summers, President Emeritus at Harvard and OpenAI board member, said recently, AI “has a great opportunity to level a lot of playing fields… and people saying structural change is something you just need to accept as part of modernity, when it was happening to other people… are now going to be seeing it happen to them, and it will be interesting to see how they respond.”
Interesting? Exhilarating? Terrifying? I frankly don’t know, but it appears that very soon we are going to find out.