{"id":281415,"date":"2026-02-13T01:52:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/281415\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T01:52:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:52:07","slug":"what-that-viral-something-big-is-happening-ai-post-gets-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/281415\/","title":{"rendered":"What that viral \u201cSomething big is happening\u201d AI post gets wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a viral essay on X, \u201cSomething Big Is Happening<\/a>,\u201d Matt Shumer writes that the world is living through a moment similar to early Covid for artificial intelligence. The founder and CEO of OthersideAI argues that AI has crossed from useful assistant to general cognitive substitute<\/a>. What\u2019s more, AI is now helping build better versions of itself. Systems rivaling most human expertise<\/a> could arrive soon.<\/p>\n

While experts know transformative change is coming fast, normies are about to be blindsided. To stick with the pandemic-era metaphor, Tom Hanks is about to get sick<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Between Shumer\u2019s essay and the resignation<\/a> of Mrinank Sharma \u2014 he led Anthropic\u2019s safety team and vague-posted<\/a> quite the farewell letter warning that \u201cthe world is in peril\u201d from \u201cinterconnected crises,\u201d while hinting that the company \u201cconstantly face[s] pressures to set aside what matters most\u201d even as it chases a $350 billion valuation \u2014 well\u2026some people are starting to wig out. Or, more precisely, the folks already super-worried about AI are now super-worrying even harder.<\/p>\n

Look, is it possible that AI models will soon indisputably meet various so-called weak AGI definitions<\/a>, at minimum? Plenty of technologists, not to mention prediction markets, suggest it is. (As a reality check, though, I keep front of mind Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis\u2019s statement<\/a> that we still need one or two AlphaGo-level technological breakthroughs<\/a> to reach AGI.)<\/p>\n

But rather than technological advances \u2014 and I have high confidence generative AI is a powerful general-purpose technology \u2014 let\u2019s instead talk about some basic bottlenecks and constraints from the world of economics rather than computer science.<\/p>\n

The long road from demo to deployment. The leap from \u201cAI models are impressive, even more than you realize\u201d to \u201ceverything changes imminently\u201d requires ignoring how economies actually absorb new technologies. Electrification took decades to redesign factories around. The internet didn\u2019t change retail overnight. AI adoption currently covers fewer than one in five US business establishments<\/a>. Deploying it across large, regulated, risk-averse institutions demands heavy complementary investment in data infrastructure, process redesign, compliance frameworks, and worker retraining. (Economists term this the productivity J-curve<\/a>.) Indeed, early-stage spending can actually depress measured output before visible gains arrive.<\/p>\n

Richer doesn\u2019t always mean busier. Let\u2019s grant the optimists \u2014 and I certainly consider myself pretty darn optimistic \u2014 their assumption about fast-advancing AI capability. Output still doesn\u2019t explode on a dime. Richer societies historically choose more leisure \u2014 earlier retirements, short workweeks \u2014 not more time at the office or factory floor. Economist Dietrich Vollrath has pointed out<\/a> that higher productivity doesn\u2019t mechanically translate into faster growth if households respond by supplying less labor. Welfare might rise substantially while headline GDP growth stays relatively modest.<\/p>\n

The slowest sector sets the speed limit. Even if AI makes some services far cheaper, demand does not expand without limit. Spending shifts toward sectors that resist automation \u2014 health care, education, in-person experiences \u2014 where output is tied more tightly to human time. (This is the famous \u201cBaumol effect\u201d<\/a> or \u201ccost disease.\u201d) As wages rise economy-wide, labor-intensive sectors with weak productivity growth claim a larger share of income. The result: Even spectacular AI gains may yield only moderate growth in overall productivity.<\/p>\n

The economy\u2019s narrowest pipe. In a system built from many complementary pieces, explains<\/a> economist Charles Jones, the narrowest pipe determines the flow. AI can accelerate coding, drafting, and research all it wants. But if energy infrastructure,<\/a> physical capital<\/a>, regulatory approval<\/a>, or human decision-making<\/a> move at ordinary speeds, those become the binding constraints that limit how fast the whole economy can grow.<\/p>\n

Economies are adaptive, complex, wonderful systems. They create the physical objects that embody and accumulate complex information \u2014 what economist Cesar Hidalgo elegantly calls \u201ccrystals of imagination.\u201d<\/a> And when they change, they adjust through gradual reorganization and reallocation, not through sudden collapse or instant takeoff. I mean, that should be your baseline scenario.<\/p>\n

Now, a degree of urgency may be warranted. (Shumer\u2019s advice to embrace the most capable AI tools now and weave them into your daily work seems prudent.) Panic-inducing analogies to early 2020 probably are not.<\/p>\n

This piece originally appeared in Pethokoukis\u2019s newsletter \u201cFaster, Please!\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a viral essay on X, \u201cSomething Big Is Happening,\u201d Matt Shumer writes that the world is living…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,219,57854,374,300,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-281415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-emerging-tech","13":"tag-innovation","14":"tag-money","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}