AI Is the Next Covid-Level Disruption, Except There's No Going Back

The AI tidal wave is fast approaching our shores.

We are fast approaching the point at which the AI tidal wave will reach the shoreline, and it will change the world forever.

What began as mere rudimentary chatbots just a few years back has fast become the most powerful and world-changing technological breakthrough of our lifetimes.

AI has achieved its Zero to One moment, and those on the frontier of the technology are starting to map out the implications it will have for humanity.

A thoughtful tech executive named

Matt Shumer on X recently published a piece titled “Something Big Is Happening,” in which he likened the current moment to that brief window when only a small number of people were paying attention to what would later become the world-changing covid hysteria era. The comparison is instructive, but with one critical difference: unlike pandemic mania, this change will not come with a reset button. There is no “return to normal.” The environment that exists on the other side of this wave will bear little resemblance to the one we’re living in now.

Essentially, the big AI companies (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, etc.) have achieved an incredible series of advancements that allow for these large language models (LLMs) to tap into both the whole of the internet and/or a hyper-customized set of data that lives within its virtual “brain” 24/7. These are no longer parlor tricks or glorified autocomplete machines. They have an incredible ability to reason and plan. With proper direction, they can execute multi-step tasks with minimal oversight. The people building these systems will tell you off the record that even they are surprised by how fast the capabilities are scaling.

Moreover, with the recent explosion of open source AI tools like OpenClaw (an open-source autonomous AI agent that connects to models like Anthropic’s Claude), these capabilities are now available to anyone with a dedicated computer. For the ambitious among us, you can now build your own AI army in a weekend.

OpenClaw (formerly Clawdbot and Moltbot), which has only been around for mere weeks, represents a major breakthrough in agentic AI. Developed by Austrian software developer Peter Steinberger, it’s a leap from passive chatbots that the public is familiar with to truly near autonomous, action-taking AI assistants (or “agents”). The tool runs locally on your own hardware, integrates with encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Signal, and can be connected to frontier LLMs from Anthropic, OpenAI.

We are in the very early innings of what will become a massive geopolitical competition over autonomous AI systems, and most of the public hasn’t the slightest clue it’s happening.

On both the institutional and the open source level, AI systems, when properly directed, are now capable of rapidly improving any and all technologies that can be connected to a computer. Shumer noted that OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-5.3 Codex, was “instrumental in creating itself.” Read that sentence again. The machines are now helping build the machines. It’s become a self-improvement loop with fewer and fewer humans involved directly in those processes.

On the AI front, 2026 is shaping up to be the most disruptive technological year of our lives. This disruption will come in the form of massive innovation and the destruction of entire industries. Both of these things will happen simultaneously, and much faster than the political and managerial class in Washington, on Wall Street, or in broader corporate America is prepared for.

Much good can come from these advancements. Top of mind, I think about the promise of a new era of scientific breakthroughs. A more efficient energy system. Agricultural resource optimization. Drug discovery timelines that collapse from a decade to months. Materials science breakthroughs that could reshape manufacturing. The potential for genuine, meaningful progress in fields that have been stagnant for decades is real. And unlike the empty promises of the covid-era “green energy transition” or the “build back better” grift economy, first principles-guided AI systems will produce real and widely perceptible innovations.

But this technology also has the inevitable effect of destroying entire career paths and industries in rapid succession. It will also deliver tools to help authoritarian governments like China, Iran, North Korea, etc become even more repressive.

On the job front, administrators will be replaced by AI agents. Virtually all simple manufacturing processes will be turned over to robots with embedded AI. Software companies will quickly become extinct, minus their licensed intellectual property. Programming, coding, developing, and software engineering will be entirely overtaken by a small number of humans assisting and training autonomous AI systems.

All of these fields are staring down the barrel of radical transformation, whether they know it or not.

While federal, state, and local governments are still debating the merits of “AI safety” frameworks and convening committees, the technology is lapping them at warp speed. By the time Congress holds its next round of hearings on “responsible AI,” half the industries they’re trying to regulate will have already been restructured by the technology itself.

The corporate media is similarly confused or asleep at the wheel. AI is coming for their jobs, too. Because of this, there remains a significant information gap between what AI can actually do right now and in short order, and what the average person thinks it can do.

This brings us to the uncomfortable but necessary conversation about what happens to the millions of American workers whose jobs are about to be automated away. The standard “techno-optimist” and free market evangelist line is that new jobs will be created, and historically, that has been true. The industrial revolution displaced millions of agricultural workers, and ultimately the economy adapted. But the speed of this transition [I hate using that word. Sorry.] is categorically different. We are not talking about a decades-long shift. We are talking about years or possibly months for a sweeping amount of industry. AI will test our commitment to our economic “isms” and for some time, it will be something of a Wild West in the job market.

The people who thrive in this new era will be those who engage with the technology early and often. I wouldn’t recommend getting so invested with one particular enterprise or open source model. But getting familiar with the space as a whole and continuing to interact with it on a daily basis will be essential.

The tidal wave is here, and it does not care whether you’re ready for it. Do not wait for the government to help you navigate this. Do not wait for your employer to “retrain” you. Do not wait for the corporate press to explain what is happening. By the time any of those institutions catch up, the landscape will have already shifted beneath your feet. It’s time to get smart on AI.