With each passing day it seems another sector suffers an AI-induced wobble on the stock market. We saw the large data companies lose billions in value when a new legal-focused AI tool was launched; we saw the owners of consumer and personal finance platforms take a hit as AI agents upped their game; and yesterday it was the turn of wealth managers to feel the squeeze after a new AI-led investment tool hit the market.
Are these wild investor reactions rational? It’s hard to say. There’s no doubt that AI capabilities will disrupt established businesses and entire sectors, but while some companies will be washed away like Blockbusters, others will ride the wave and figure out a way to deploy the same tech for their own advantage.
We’re probably entering the most intense and uncertain period of creative destruction that modern capitalism has ever experienced. As a business journalist I find the prospect thrilling. But should I?
According to a viral post by AI entrepreneur and investor Matt Shumer, my job is every bit as vulnerable as a financial analyst or software engineer. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the “civilisational warning” issued by Anthopric’s co-founder, having found his 20,000 word essay on the looming impact of powerful AI to be in equal parts fascinating and frightening. Nevertheless, I was able to file it away under ‘something to worry about in a few years’ and, in the meantime, use it to make me sound smarter when discussing AI.
When AI goes from useful tool to solid rival
But Shumer’s pithier article is less concerned with philosophical debates about society’s ability to wield the power responsibly, and instead makes a more immediate point about just how good AI is right now, and how ignorant of this fact most people are. He writes: “The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from ‘helpful tool’ to ‘does my job better than I do’, is the experience everyone else is about to have.”
He cites legal services, financial analysis, software engineering, customer service, medical analysis and (gulp) journalism as areas where the latest OpenAI and Anthropic platforms are more than capable of replicating human output, if they’re not already better at it.
For balance (and comfort) other expert views are available that say this perspective is overblown; that just because a coder coded himself out of a job it’s not a given that other sectors and roles will become obsolete. You can pick your perspective, but Shumer does make a point that it’s hard to argue with; wherever you stand on this debate you really should start using AI seriously. Pay for it, explore it, experiment with it – and get used to it.
