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Living in the Petri Dish of the Future
If you missed the brouhaha around a 5,000-word blog post about AI, let me bring you up to speed. But before I do, I want to remind you that sometimes a blog post is not just a blog post. It is really about the spectacle of it all.
Let me rewind. HyperWriteAI CEO Matt Shumer’s post on Twitter, “Something Big Is Happening,” went viral this week. Last check, it had over 75 million views, though I can guarantee you very few people read the whole thing. I bet not as many read the summary. Still, no stopping the chattering classes.
It showed up so often in my feed that I decided to read it. I started and stopped a dozen times. I don’t know why I persevered. Glutton for punishment? My efforts should tell you something about the quality of writing.
His thesis is that coding is the canary in the coal mine and other professions will follow. That’s the meta point, and I don’t disagree with it. We are going through a sea change in how we interact with information, so professions are going to change as a result. The industrialization and automation of software has been a topic of discussion since my GigaOm days. When someone claims the canary is already dead and the rest of us are next, I want to hear what they have to say. Even if it takes a dozen attempts to get through the “essay.”
What really kept me going was his Covid comparison. Shumer compared this moment in AI to February 2020, when a virus was spreading somewhere overseas and nobody was paying attention. He thinks we’re in the “this seems overblown” phase of something much bigger than Covid.
This is not the first time I’ve heard that comparison. Months ago, a very smart, highly rational friend of mine explained it to me differently. And better. He pointed out that as average humans, we had never lived the scientific process the way we did with the Covid crisis and the emergence of the vaccine. No wonder everyone from pot-smoking podcasters to scientists had differing opinions. The whole thing was playing out in front of us in real time.
The trials, the debates, the reversals, the uncertainty, the competing claims, the people who were sure they knew what was coming and turned out to be wrong. We watched science happen. It was messy, public, unfinished. And everyone became an armchair epidemiologist overnight.
We are doing the exact same thing with AI. We are living inside the experiment. The results aren’t in. But that doesn’t stop anyone from declaring them.
Shumer’s piece was greeted with enthusiasm by Fortune magazine’s editor in chief. A day later, Jeremy Kahn at Fortune called it fear-mongering built on faulty assumptions. Gary Marcus called it “weaponized hype.” Fortune‘s AI reporter Sharon Goldman, who Shumer had personally pitched before publishing, wrote that she was glad she didn’t read a draft. Ed Zitron also pointed out that Shumer has a checkered past. In 2024, he released an AI model called Reflection 70B that he trumpeted as “the world’s top open-source model,” but independent researchers couldn’t replicate the results. Turns out the model appeared to be a wrapper around Anthropic’s Claude rather than anything new. Shumer apologized, said he “got ahead of himself.”
Let’s zoom out and focus on the real big question.
This whole drama, from the viral post to the takedowns to the counter-takes, none of it is really about Shumer’s essay. What it’s about is simpler. And harder to admit. In the words of screenwriter William Goldman, “Nobody knows anything.” As I have written before, we are living in a petri dish of the future. Some of us are hopeful. Some of us are terrified. Most of us are both, often in the same hour. And into that vacuum of uncertainty there is a torrent of speculation dressed up as prophecy.
Shumer writes his breathless warning. Marcus writes his skeptical rebuttal. Kahn points out the flawed assumptions. Goldman notes the difficulty of separating signal from hype. And every one of them is also selling something. A book. A newsletter. A reputation. An audience. Since attention is the currency and velocity is the authority, AI at present is the best momentum asset class.
Every cycle produces its prophets and its skeptics. And every cycle, the reality turns out to be different from what either camp predicted. Not better, not worse. Different. Yeah, I am so glad to be out of the damn forecasting business. I embrace the uncertainty, the future, and let it all happen.
As for Twitter, it probably has moved on to something else. I am sure. I haven’t looked.
February 12, 2026. San Francisco
Imagine that back in February of 1996, you took a world-wide vote. You say, “here’s an optional future: 30 years from now, you’ll be able to get anything delivered to your home in a day, you’ll be able to actually watch your taxi on it’s way to you (on your phone!) and you’ll be able to get the answer to any question anywhere at any time. The tradeoff is that no one will believe anything any more, people will be more isolated and depressed than ever and there will be no middle class.”
How many people do you think would have voted for that plan? I think they would have lost in the vote tally.
Now, we have something even more disruptive than the internet. We have zero idea what’s going to happen, but it’s scary AF because no one, even the people building it, have any idea what comes next.
I tink what people are scared of is that they don’t have a say in this. A handful of very wealthy people are pushing a technology forward that will fundamentally reshape the future (we know that much) and we have no idea how. And we have zero say in the matter.
We are absolutely in the petri dish. Whether we like it or not.
Exactly, we all want to be part of history. And this is yet another twist in the INternet’s tale. I am just happy to be here for the ride 🙂
Hi Om.
You are writing more, and I hope that means you are feeling better.
Since you are writing more, I am reading more. Your level approach, sound thinking, risk mitigation are welcome news in a feed that is overwhelmed, much like its human. Thank you.
And let’s catch up soon.
I am willing to write when I have something to say. It is not often, but once in a while wind carries me towards the right words.
Thanks for reading.
Obviously one should have an healthy doze of skepticism on claims and counter-claims.
No one, absolutely no one can predict how this will play out and list out consequences in hi-fi
This also a time where probabilistic thinking helps.
All possibilities and their consequences are probabilistic and they constantly and continuously change!
Note To Self: Absorb from all biases. Don’t get attached to any!
Well said: “Absorb from all biases. Don’t get attached to any!”