{"id":433029,"date":"2026-01-23T21:19:36","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T21:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/433029\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T21:19:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T21:19:36","slug":"ai-anxiety-is-so-widespread-that-veteran-microsoft-researchers-are-having-panic-attacks-because-theyre-making-themselves-obsolete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/433029\/","title":{"rendered":"AI anxiety is so widespread that veteran Microsoft researchers are having panic attacks because they’re making themselves obsolete"},"content":{"rendered":"

Journalist Ira Glass<\/a>, who hosts the NPR show \u201cThis American Life<\/a>,\u201d is not a computer scientist. He doesn\u2019t work at Google<\/a>, Apple<\/a> or Nvidia<\/a>. But he does have a great ear for useful phrases, and in 2024 he organized an entire episode<\/a> around one that might resonate with anyone who feels blindsided by the pace of AI development: \u201cUnprepared for what has already happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coined by science journalist Alex Steffen<\/a>, the phrase captures the unsettling feeling that \u201cthe experience and expertise you\u2019ve built up\u201d may now be obsolete \u2013 or, at least, a lot less valuable than it once was.<\/p>\n

Whenever I lead workshops in law firms, government agencies or nonprofit organizations, I hear that same concern. Highly educated, accomplished professionals worry whether there will be a place for them in an economy where generative AI can quickly \u2013 and relativity cheaply \u2013 complete a growing list of tasks that an extremely large number of people currently get paid to do.<\/p>\n

Seeing a future that doesn\u2019t include you<\/p>\n

In technology reporter Cade Metz\u2019s 2022 book, \u201cGenius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World<\/a>,\u201d he describes the panic that washed over a veteran researcher at Microsoft<\/a> named Chris Brockett when Brockett first encountered an artificial intelligence program that could essentially perform everything he\u2019d spent decades learning how to master.<\/p>\n

Overcome by the thought that a piece of software had now made his entire skill set and knowledge base irrelevant, Brockett was actually rushed to the hospital because he thought he was having a heart attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy 52-year-old body had one of those moments when I saw a future where I wasn\u2019t involved,\u201d he later told Metz.<\/p>\n

In his 2018 book, \u201cLife 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence<\/a>,\u201d MIT physicist Max Tegmark<\/a> expresses a similar anxiety.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs technology keeps improving, will the rise of AI eventually eclipse those abilities that provide my current sense of self-worth and value on the job market?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer to that question, unnervingly, can often feel outside of our individual control.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing more AI-related products and advancements in a single day than we saw in a single year a decade ago,\u201d a Silicon Valley product manager told a reporter for Vanity Fair back in 2023<\/a>. Things have only accelerated since then.<\/p>\n

Even Dario Amodei \u2013 the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, the company that created the popular chatbot Claude \u2013 has been shaken by the increasing power of AI tools. \u201cI think of all the times when I wrote code,\u201d he said in an interview<\/a> on the tech podcast \u201cHard Fork.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s like a part of my identity that I\u2019m good at this. And then I\u2019m like, oh, my god, there\u2019s going to be these (AI) systems that [can perform a lot better than I can].\u201d<\/p>\n

\"GraphicWhat will happen to workers who have spent their entire lives learning a skill that AI can replicate? jokerpro\/iStock via Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

The irony that these fears live inside the brain of someone who leads one of the most important AI companies in the world is not lost on Amodei.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven as the one who\u2019s building these systems,\u201d he added, \u201ceven as one of the ones who benefits most from (them), there\u2019s still something a bit threatening about (them).\u201d<\/p>\n

Autor and agency<\/p>\n

Yet as the labor economist David Autor<\/a> has argued, we all have more agency over the future than we might think.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Autor was interviewed by Bloomberg News<\/a> soon after publishing a research paper titled Applying AI to Rebuild Middle-Class Jobs<\/a>. The paper explores the idea that AI, if managed well, might be able to help a larger set of people perform the kind of higher-value \u2013 and higher-paying \u2013 \u201cdecision-making tasks currently arrogated to elite experts like doctors, lawyers, coders and educators.\u201d<\/p>\n

This shift, Autor suggests, \u201cwould improve the quality of jobs for workers without college degrees, moderate earnings inequality, and \u2013 akin to what the Industrial Revolution did for consumer goods \u2013 lower the cost of key services such as healthcare, education and legal expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting, hopeful argument, and Autor, who has spent decades studying the effects of automation and computerization on the workforce, has the intellectual heft to explain it without coming across as Pollyannish.<\/p>\n

But what I found most heartening about the interview was Autor\u2019s response to a question about a type of \u201cAI doomerism\u201d that believes that widespread economic displacement is inevitable and there\u2019s nothing we can do to stop it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future should not be treated as a forecasting or prediction exercise,\u201d he said. \u201cIt should be treated as a design problem \u2013 because the future is not (something) where we just wait and see what happens. \u2026 We have enormous control over the future in which we live, and [the quality of that future] depends on the investments and structures that we create today.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the starting line<\/p>\n

I try to emphasize Autor\u2019s point about the future being more of a \u201cdesign problem\u201d than a \u201cprediction exercise\u201d in all the AI courses and workshops I teach to law students and lawyers, many of whom fret over their own job prospects.<\/p>\n

The nice thing about the current AI moment, I tell them, is that there is still time for deliberate action. Although the first scientific paper on neural networks<\/a> was published all the way back in 1943, we\u2019re still very much in the early stages of so-called \u201cgenerative AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

No student or employee is hopelessly behind. Nor is anyone commandingly ahead.<\/p>\n

Instead, each of us is in an enviable spot: right at the starting line.<\/p>\n

Patrick Barry<\/a>, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law and Director of Digital Academic Initiatives, University of Michigan<\/a><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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