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Tech leaders are raising tough questions over Matt Shumer’s viral essay on how AI will impact jobs.

Scientists and business leaders are responding to a viral essay warning of AI’s impact on jobs with a mix of agreement and skepticism.

The essay, titled “Something Big is Coming,” written by cofounder and CEO of OthersideAI, Matt Shumer, has racked up more than 60 million views on X as of Thursday.

In the 5,000-word post, Shumer said that AI could upend daily life on a scale “much bigger” than COVID, a comparison which drew pushback online. He wrote that the changes already unfolding in the tech sector are likely a preview of disruptions that could soon reach other industries as well.

“Even if there is a 20% chance of this happening, people deserve to know and have time to prepare,” Shumer told Business Insider’s Brent Griffiths in an interview.

Here’s what some of the sharpest minds in AI are saying about Shumer’s essay.

David Haber

Haber, a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz specializing in technology investments, posted on X that Shumer’s essay contains “great advice for how to get ahead in your job at any large company right now.”

“‘I used AI to do this analysis in an hour instead of three days is going to be the most valuable person in the room.’ Not eventually. Right now,” Haber quotes from the essay. “Learn these tools. Get proficient. Demonstrate what’s possible.”

Alexis Ohanian

The Reddit founder responded to Shumer’s initial post on X with a simple comment: “Great writeup. Strongly agree.”

Since 2023, Reddit has introduced a range of AI-driven tools, from search features that summarize user discussions to AI that sharpens its content recommendations and targets ads, but Ohanian recently emphasized that the platform must retain its humanity to stay competitive.

Eric Markowitz

Markowitz, the author and managing partner and director of research at Nightview Capital, a long-term-oriented investment firm, responded to Schumer with an essay almost as long, which criticized the practice of chasing speed and replacing the value of humanity simply because it could be done.

“These two worlds — Wall Street and Silicon Valley — have formed a feedback loop of short-termism so tight, so self-reinforcing, that they’ve confused efficiency with purpose, growth with meaning, and the elimination of people with progress,” wrote Markowitz.

“I have two research assistants. Could I replace them with AI? Of course. But their value extends their weekly output,” Markowitz added. “They give meaning to my work and I love seeing the excitement in their faces when they make a new discovery that I, alone, could not have found.”

“Let me say it again: we are not our tools. We never have been,” Markowitz wrote in conclusion.

Todd McLees

McLees, the founder of HumanSkills.AI, wrote on X that Shumer is not wrong, but he said that the advice Shumer provided is akin to “telling someone the floodwaters are rising and handing them a better bucket.”

“As AI grows in ability, our role in defining direction, values, and purpose only becomes more essential,” McLees said.

“What do you bring when the machine can do the work? That’s the only question that matters when intelligence is abundant,” McLees added. “Shumer wrote the alarm. It’s a good one. But alarms don’t tell you where to go. You have to find that within yourself.”

Gary Marcus

Marcus, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU and founder of AI companies Robust.AI, has some harsh words for Schumer in his newsletter.

Marcuz called Shumer’s blog post “weaponized hype, filled with vivid narrative and marketing speech,” and said he did not provide real data to support the claim that the latest AI can write complicated apps without mistakes.

“Shumer’s presentation is completely one-sided, omitting lots of concerns that have been widely expressed here and elsewhere,” Marcus added, after discussing various studies that question the accuracy and productivity gain AI tools actually provide.

Vishal Misra

Misra, Vice Dean of Computing and Artificial Intelligence at Columbia University, responded in a lengthy Substack article that detailed why he doesn’t think AI is as scary as it sounds, at least not right now.

Misra wrote that many strange AI behaviors that make them seem sentient, such as perceived resistance and self-preservation, are simply a result of training data.

As for the possible elimination of jobs, Misra said he understands the anxiety, but history says we may not need to panic.

“When the camera was invented, portrait painters had every reason to panic. Their livelihood depended on a skill that a machine could now approximate,” Misra wrote.

“What happened? Painters didn’t disappear. They were freed from the obligation to faithfully reproduce reality and ventured into impressionism, cubism, abstract expressionism,” Misra added. “The camera didn’t kill painting. It liberated it.”




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FBI ups reward in Nancy Guthrie case to $100,000 and shares new details about a suspect

  • The FBI released new details on a suspect in Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.
  • The suspect was described as a male of average build, seen carrying an Ozark Trail Hiker Pack.
  • The FBI also doubled the reward for information on the case.

The FBI has upped its reward in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie and shared new details on a suspect.

The agency is offering $100,000, up from $50,000, for information that leads to Guthrie’s location or to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in her disappearance, the FBI said Thursday.

Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, has been missing since February 1. Authorities have said Guthrie, who has limited mobility and takes a daily medication for a heart condition, was abducted from her home near Tucson, Arizona.

The FBI said Thursday that identifying details about the suspect had been confirmed, describing him as a man of average build, about 5 feet and 9 to 10 inches tall. He was seen in doorbell camera footage wearing a black backpack identified as a 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack.

On Tuesday, the FBI and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department released images from Guthrie’s Nest doorbell camera showing a person at her door wearing a full ski mask. Authorities said the person was “armed.”

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.




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Lloyd Lee

Microsoft AI CEO: ‘Most, if not all’ white-collar tasks can be replaced by AI within 12-18 months

Microsoft’s AI CEO is joining a chorus of executives who say they anticipate widespread job automation driven by artificial intelligence.

Mustafa Suleyman, the Microsoft AI chief, said in an interview with the Financial Times that he predicts most, if not every, task in white-collar fields will be automated by AI within the next year or year and a half.

“I think that we’re going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks,” Suleyman said in the interview that was published Wednesday. “So white-collar work, where you’re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”

The CEO said the trend is already observable in software engineering, in which employees are using “AI-assisted coding for the vast majority of their code production.”

“It’s a quite different relationship to the technology, and that’s happened in the last six months,” he said.

AI’s rapid advancement over the past half-decade has brought about real, documented shifts in how some white-collar work is performed.

Business Insider recently reported that “AI fatigue” has hit software engineering: the technology has unlocked productivity but also exhaustion, as workers are expected to take on more work at once.

Some leaders and pioneers in AI say that artificial intelligence will advance far enough to replace entire workforces.

Stuart Russell, a computer scientist who co-authored one of the world’s most authoritative books on AI, said in an interview last year that political leaders are looking at “80% unemployment” due to AI, as jobs ranging from surgeons to CEOs are at risk of being replaced.

Dario Amodei, CEO and cofounder of Anthropic, previously said AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs.

“We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming,” Amodei told Axios in an interview. “I don’t think this is on people’s radar.”

A spokesperson for Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment.




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I visited Polymarket’s free grocery store. It was more impressive than Kalshi’s similar stunt.

  • Polymarket launched a limited time grocery store pop-up in the West Village. I checked it out.
  • Attendees could take as many groceries as they could fit in a Polymarket tote bag.
  • Compared to Kalshi’s grocery pop-up, Polymarket’s seemed more planned out and polished.

Free groceries in New York? It feels like an impossibility — and yet, I saw it twice in two weeks.

It’s all thanks to a good old-fashioned marketing battle.

Prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi are in a two-week grocery war, both propping up short-term free supermarket stunts in New York. Last week, Kalshi took over a Westside Market for a day. On Thursday, Polymarket debuted its own store.

I stepped inside the store two hours before it officially opened as part of a press preview. The store was pristine, unmarked by the what I assume would be the rampant foot traffic that would soon occupy it.

It looked like a miniaturized Trader Joe’s.

The experience also seemed more planned out than Kalshi’s similar marketing stunt. While Kalshi took over an existing supermarket for one day, offering $50 in free groceries, Polymarket designed its own pop-up scheduled to be open for five days (though free groceries will only be available on three of those days — more on that later).

Polymarket is also accepting community donations for local charities, and donated $1 million to Food Bank for NYC.

I came out impressed — even if it was a week behind its competitor. Here’s what I saw.

The West Village has a new pop-up.

The Polymarket flag waved in the wind of a warm(ish) winter day.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

I arrived at The Polymarket (get it?) at 11:30 a.m., a half hour before the originally planned opening time of noon. (The company later pushed it back to 2 p.m., confusing some attendees.) The front of the shop was a circus of organizers, media, and everyday rubberneckers.

New York establishments love to call themselves the “first” or the “best.” Is The Polymarket really New York’s “first free grocery store”? Likely not, especially if you count the hundreds of food pantries across the city.

One attendee, Milla Jackson, arrived at 7:30 a.m.


Milla Jackson is pictured waiting in line for the Polymarket

“I looked through the window, and I saw they had some good products,” Jackson said.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

I chatted with some folks in line, including Milla Jackson, a school aide from Staten Island. On hour four of her wait, she was grateful for her warm winter jacket.

Jackson heard about the pop-up in the newsletter “NYC for Free.” She spotted some olive oil inside that she was excited to pick up.

“I just found out about Polymarket,” she said. “I looked it up last night. I’m like, ‘Oh, I definitely want to show up.'”

Victoria Plaza arrived at 11 a.m.


Victoria Plaza is pictured in line for the Polymarket.

“I can’t imagine it will be sustainable for more than four days,” Plaza said.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

Victoria Plaza was around Grand Central Terminal when Polymarket announced the location on social media. She expected that those ahead of her had been in the neighborhood.

The financial planning advisor came mostly out of curiosity. What would she take inside? “Whatever I can carry,” she said.

The Polymarket team was keeping everyone warm.


A staffer hands out cups of hot chocolate to those waiting in line for the Polymarket.

Polymarket staff handed out hot chocolate and coffee.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

At 34° and sunny, Polymarket got lucky with a nicer opening day than Kalshi. They also handed out hot drinks (which Kalshi had) and put up heat lamps (which Kalshi did not have).

One of the day’s oddities: a painted-over sign.


A man is pictured painting over the Polymarket logo.

Why were they painting over the Polymarket logo?

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

A few minutes before making it inside, a man stationed his ladder on the front door and began painting over one of the Polymarket signs. No one seemed to know why.

The store’s schedule was pasted on a window.


A schedule for the Polymarket is pictured.

The Polymarket’s schedule included a Valentine’s Day celebration.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

For those seeking out free groceries, Polymarket will offer them up on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. Those days also have community donation hours.

Saturday is Valentine’s Day, when The Polymarket will have a “community celebration” with free flowers and cards. Monday is the final day for donations.

Inside, the first thing I noticed was a disclaimer.


A sign at the Polymarket demonstrating that we are being recorded is pictured.

Nestled behind a basket of Kind bars was a reminder that we were being filmed.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

Inside the store, there were several framed notices that our movements would be filmed. It was a reminder: as much as The Polymarket is about free groceries, it’s also about a marketing stunt.

“Take what you need” (that can fit in a tote bag).


Free tote bags are pictured at the Polymarket.

How much can you take from The Polymarket? As much as fits in a tote bag.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

No, you can’t roll up to The Polymarket with a huge trash bag and clear off all the shelves. There are unsurprisingly some limits.

At Kalshi’s pop-up, it was a cost ceiling: no more than $50 worth of goods. At the expensive Westside Market, $50 meant only a few items.

At The Polymarket, it’s a constraint of physical space. Attendees get one branded tote bag and can leave with as much as it will fit.

Offerings were limited but classic.


Boxes of pasta and jars of tomato sauce are pictured at the Polymarket.

The Polymarket had both regular and gluten-free pasta.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

The Polymarket focused on pantry staples. Oil, rice, seasonings, peanut butter, beans, the list goes on. There were no fancy premade meals, like at the Kalshi pop-up.

I also noticed more branding at Polymarket’s pop-up than at Kalshi’s. Here’s a digital sign advertising Polymarket above the gluten-free pasta. The flowers were wrapped in Polymarket-branded tissue.

There was a lot of fresh produce.


Produce is pictured at the Polymarket.

Produce filled bins on the floor and fridges in the back.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

Carrots, avocados, bell peppers, you name it. The Polymarket put produce front and center. They looked idyllic in their wooden crates — though I’m not sure how long that sheen will last after the public opening.

Polymarket can’t escape the hype bro reputation.


Prime energy drinks are pictured at the Polymarket.

Spotted: Logan Paul’s energy drink.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

The Kalshi grocery store was swarmed with crypto influencers and online betters. While that crowd hadn’t yet arrived at The Polymarket from what I could see, there were some signs of an overly online presence. The fridges were stocked with Logan Paul’s Prime Energy, for example.

Kerrygold? In this economy?


Kerrygold butter is pictured at the Polymarket.

Polymarket shelled out for their butter choice.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider.

Most of the items in The Polymarket were fairly low-cost, though they all had name brands. One exception: the butter. Kerrygold is expensive! I was surprised to see a fridge full of them, ready for the taking.

One thoughtful touch: socks.


Socks are pictured at the Polymarket.

The Polymarket had cleaning products and tampons.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

Socks are often the most requested items at homeless shelters. That’s especially true in the cold, cold winter. It was a nice touch to see a shelf full of them.

Why The Polymarket felt more thoughtfully designed than Kalshi’s grocery pop-up.


A sign on the Polymarket is pictured.

“This one’s on us!” a sign at The Polymarket promised.

Henry Chandonnet/Business Insider

Leaving The Polymarket, I thought it was better planned out than Kalshi’s pop-up.

Where Kalshi had unlimited options but a tight overall budget of $50, I felt The Polymarket was more tailored to what people might want from a free-grocery stunt in the winter months. I found the staff was generally friendlier, and the whole thing was a bit less confusing. The emphasis on donation also made it feel less like a shiny corporate branding exercise.

Even Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fan of affordability but not prediction markets, seemed to begrudgingly applaud Polymarket’s move.

Who knows what will happen over the next few days, as The Polymarket opens. Maybe the shelves will run dry. Either way, Polymarket seemed to know what it was doing at the jump.

Plus, the heating lamps were a nice touch.




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Katie Notopoulos

How ‘jestermaxxing’ and ‘frame mogging’ are taking over the internet

Have you jestermaxxed recently? Have you or someone you know been frame-mogged by an ASU fraternity leader? Did it cause your cortisol levels to spike?

If you’ve been spending too much time online lately, you’re likely seeing strange warpings of the English language.

Me? I think it’s great. We need some new words! But also, be mindful that these new silly words aren’t necessarily spreading organically. Some people are making money off their spread.

The sudden virality of these words comes as a 20-year-old looksmaxxing livestreamer who goes by “Clavicular” has broken containment of the relatively small corner of the internet for the looksmaxxing community. Suddenly, these words seem to be the latest obsession of the overly online crowd.

And with that comes a whole new way of speaking.

For now, don’t worry about who or why Clavicular is. You can read this article about him, or wait until The New York Times publishes its story (a reporter was with him last weekend to write an expected profile). The thing is, for our purposes, the details about him don’t really matter — he’s a 20-year-old looksmaxxer who also livestreams on Kick. That’s all you need to know. It’s like the origins of the “67” meme: Sure, there’s some obscure backstory with a line from a rap song, but the meme is really about how it means nothing. (I reached out to Clavicular, but didn’t hear back.)

The output — these wacky phrases that are wrenching the English language to its logical conclusion of rot — is what is really important here. I suspect that long after we forget about the guy, we’ll still be using these new terms like “mogged” and “maxxed.”

(For the record, “mogged” is looksmaxxing forum lingo that’s been around for a while and means to be better looking or better than someone else. It’s now being used as a suffix, like “frame-mogged” for someone who has more impressive shoulders.)

There’s no question that this vernacular has broken containment to normies. Whether that’s good or bad is a matter of opinion.

There’s also a business reason that suddenly you’re seeing these wacky phrases everywhere, and it’s not just organic meme adoption.

A lot of the most over-the-top posts about “jestermaxxing” and “frame mogging” are coming as captions to video clips from third parties known as “clippers.”

Clippers are people who post short clips on social media from longer content like podcasts, livestreams, gaming, or even TV shows and movies. These clippers can have a financial motive: They can get paid by creator programs on platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram Reels if their posts go viral. And they can also be paid by content creators themselves to promote their podcasts, livestreams, or other products.

Clippers are incentivized to find the most ridiculous moments in a livestream and slap on the most clickable, enticing caption or commentary for their posts on X and other social media platforms. This has created a kind of house style all its own — note the off-capitalization and tendency to end in a question.

The internet is always giving us new words and new terms. Sure, “jestermaxxing” will eventually sound old and cringe (perhaps soon, even), but this is the beautiful bounty of online communication. New ways of communicating and expressing! In this case, it also seems relevant to keep in mind that the new memewords are being pushed by people who are chasing dollars, not just lols.




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Alice Tecotzky

JPMorgan’s commercial and investment bank gets an AI-driven reshuffle

JPMorgan is consolidating power to move faster on AI.

The bank is reshuffling its commercial and investment bank to “maximize the impact of AI,” according to an internal memo seen by Business Insider that was sent this week.

The firm has named Guy Halamish as the chief operating officer of the CIB and tasked him with overseeing the ongoing effort to “harness the power of our data and fully leverage rapidly evolving AI capabilities,” the memo, signed by the CIB’s co-CEOs, Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh, said. Halamish’s new role was first reported by Bloomberg.


Guy Halamish

Guy Halamish is taking on a new role as part of the AI push.

JPMorgan



Under the new structure, each major business in the division, including banking, markets, payments, and securities services, will have its own chief data and analytics officer reporting jointly to Halamish and business heads. The bank recently hired Zachery Anderson as the chief data and analytics officer of its payments division, after a nearly six-year stint at UK-based lender NatWest. In a LinkedIn post about the new job, Anderson said he wants to push the “edge of the possible with AI.”

The move is part of a new strategy to break silos across the unit and speed up adoption of AI.

The team of officers will work with the wider firm on a range of efforts, including “preparing our infrastructure for more advanced AI and the expanded use of AI agents” and “driving end-to-end transformation” in areas such as client onboarding.

The CIB is a huge profit driver for JPMorgan — in 2024, it generated $25 billion in net income out of a firmwide total of $58.5 billion, according to that year’s annual report.

JPMorgan, backed last year by an approximately $18 billion tech budget, is one of the financial industry’s leaders in AI, with its own proprietary genAI platform and additional tools in the pipeline. CEO Jamie Dimon defended the firm’s AI spending on a recent earnings call.

“We are going to stay out front, so help us God,” Dimon said about the spending.

Work at JPMorgan or have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at atecotzky@insider.com or Signal at alicetecotzky.05. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.




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reporter allie kelly

Cancer under 50 can cost $45,000 — and that’s just in the first year of treatment

A GoFundMe for James Van Der Beek’s family highlights a harsh reality of young cancer diagnoses: they can be financially devastating.

“The costs of James’s medical care and the extended fight against cancer have left the family out of funds,” reads the fundraising page.

The effort raised over $1 million in 24 hours following the actor’s death from colorectal cancer on February 11.

Van Der Beek, who was 48, was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2023 and publicly announced his diagnosis in late 2024. He is survived by his wife, Kimberly, and their six children. The fundraiser says the money will help pay off Van Der Beek’s care, cover household expenses, and support the kids’ education.

The family’s story underscores the financial struggles for millions of Americans navigating a cancer diagnosis under 50. While it’s hard to face steep healthcare costs at any time, it can be especially challenging during prime earning years. Van Der Beek worked in TV and movies from the 1990s to the early 2020s.

Young cancer patients lose $5,000 in yearly wages

Business Insider heard from dozens of patients as part of a yearlong investigation into young cancer cases. They told us about the credit card debt they incurred from treatment, the skyrocketing cost of health insurance, and the impact of cancer on their working lives long past recovery.

Our newsroom collaboration with health economists at GoodRx found that the average 30-something with a stage 3 colon cancer diagnosis spends $45,000 out of pocket in their first year of treatment. Chemotherapy, prescriptions, insurance premiums, fertility treatments, and unexpected costs like transportation and mobility aids are included in that figure.

Lost wages are too — young patients in their prime earning years typically miss out on thousands of dollars in income.

The GoodRx analysis of data in the national Medical Expenditure Panel Survey found that the average cancer patient ages 18 to 44 loses $5,104 in annual wages and 26 days of work due to illness. This is markedly more than older patients outside their prime working window: Patients ages 45 to 64 lose $2,903 in wages and 18 days of work.

These numbers are averages, and a particular patient’s wage losses and costs may vary depending on their age, job, treatment plan, and location. But it highlights a truth for young adults like Van Der Beek: Bills for cancer care can hit at a time when people are financially vulnerable or facing income instability.

Financial challenges can also be compounded by career setbacks. Young cancer patients told Business Insider they struggled to balance their workload with constant medical appointments and worried about losing out on promotions. Some had to quit their jobs, while others couldn’t afford to give up their employer-sponsored health insurance. Medical debt is among the top causes of bankruptcy in the US, and is more frequently reported by millennials than any other generation.

What’s harder to capture in data is the emotional toll young cancer has on patients, especially those who consider their careers to be part of their identities.

As Van Der Beek told Business Insider last year: “All these beautiful things that I love, and I used to define myself as — a father, a provider, a husband — all that got taken away, or at least paused. I had to sit there and say, ‘Well, what am I?’ And it was, ‘I’m still worthy of love.'”




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Are you feeling AI fatigue at work? We want to hear from you

  • Software engineers have voiced burnout concerns in a world of vibe coding and frequent model launches.
  • Engineers say AI is making them more productive, but ultimately draining them.
  • Do you use AI tools at work and feel AI fatigue? Take our survey.

Software engineers are in the AI hot seat — and they’re feeling it.

Are you?

Facing pressures to keep their edge and avoid layoffs, software engineers are leaning into AI coding tools to help them do more, faster. But programmers have recently sounded the alarm that the productivity gains that come from AI can come at a mental cost.

Say, hello to AI fatigue.

Siddhant Khare, a software engineer who builds AI tools, recently struck a chord with his post about the topic, which he said “every engineer needs to confront.” He told Business Insider that some days he used to be able to focus on just one task, but now AI is constantly pulling him in different directions.

Steve Yegge, who worked at Amazon in the early days and spent 12 years at Google, said he and his friends have even started to take naps during the day to cope with exhausting AI coding sprints. He said that companies should consider imposing a 3-hour cap on AI-assisted work.

AI fatigue — which is notably different than simply being tired about hearing about AI or being pressured to use it at work — has become a hot topic among software engineers, but it can also show up in other industries.

Do you use AI at work? Take our survey on AI fatigue:




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Author of viral ‘Something Big is Coming’ essay says AI helped him write it — and that proves his point

The author of the viral essay warning about impending AI disruption says he couldn’t wait any longer to get the word out.

“Let’s say there is just a 20% chance of it happening, which is maybe realistic, maybe underselling it,” Matt Shumer, GP of Shumer Capital, said during an interview with Business Insider. “Even if there is a 20% chance of this happening, people deserve to know and have time to prepare.”

The people in tech who previously warned about AI’s impact were mostly speaking to others in the industry, he said. Shumer said he wanted something that spoke to his dad, a lawyer who is just a few years from retirement and is hopeful he can run out the clock on the potential massive change on the horizon.

He’s certainly found an audience.

His essay, titled “Something Big is Coming,” has been viewed over 60 million times on X alone, as of Wednesday evening. In the nearly 5,000-word post, Shumer wrote that AI’s disruption to people’s lives could be “much bigger” than COVID — a comparison that has drawn some pushback online. Shumer’s past controversy over an open-source model he promoted in 2024 has also come under scrutiny, after AI researchers discovered the model didn’t live up to his performance claims. He previously apologized, saying “I got ahead of myself when I announced this project.”

In his essay, Shumer also wrote that what he’s seeing in tech is likely what awaits other industries.

“I don’t know that this is coming for sure, but I think a lot of us in tech really see this progress, and it’s frankly dizzying, and there’s a good chance of this,” he said. “And the more people know, the better.”

Shumer is not alone in his fears about the future.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who is known for writing eyebrow-raising essays of his own, has said that up to half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs may be wiped out in the next one to five years. xAI CEO Elon Musk has called AI a “supersonic tsunami” that will quickly eliminate jobs that don’t involve physical labor.

Shumer said even he is unsettled about the prospects of AI. After all, he’s 26 and still near the beginning years of his career. In 2020, he cofounded OthersideAI, which later spawned HyperWrite, an AI-assisted writing tool.

“I don’t know how many more years of my career there will be if this all actually comes to pass,” he told Business Insider. “So, it’s frankly a little confusing and terrifying for someone like me.”

Part of the issue is that AI is unlikely to affect all industries in the same way or at the same time, making career advice highly dependent on a person’s specific situation.

“If you’re a nurse, you’re probably going to be fine for quite some time,” he told Business Insider, adding that junior associates at law school face significantly more risk because many of the introductory-type tasks they do are already being targeted by AI companies.

In his essay, Shumer wrote that his realization of what’s in store came after his experience with OpenAI’s GPT-5.3-Codex, which was released last week. In its release notes, OpenAI said GPT-5.3-Codex was its “first model that was instrumental in creating itself.” Shumer wrote that AI is now capable of doing his technical work.

As for the other tasks, Shumer has been quite open about how AI helped him write his viral essay about AI. He said he spent hours working with Claude to craft his message.

“It did help a lot,” he told TBPN on Wednesday, “and I think that’s kind of the point.”

It’s why Shumer’s message to everyone who turned away from AI, perhaps after a clunky experience with an early version of ChatGPT years ago, is that they should seize the opportunity to see the breadth of what the technology can do now.

“If you look back 10 years from now and this did come to pass, you’ll be very glad you did,” he told Business Insider.




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Melia Russell smiles

Docusign’s former CEO took a risk jumping into an older corner of legal tech. The numbers suggest it’s working.

For years, the software that companies use to draft, sign, and store contracts was legal tech’s center of gravity. Then ChatGPT arrived.

Budgets and attention snapped to agents and copilots, and legal pundits started declaring the contract software category a ticking time bomb.

Ironclad, one of the contract-lifecycle management (CLM) companies that rode the boom, says the obituary is premature.

The company told Business Insider it has crossed $200 million in annual recurring revenue, up from $150 million last May, and its customers include OpenAI, Salesforce, L’Oreal, and Mastercard. Founded in 2014, Ironclad has raised $333 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, Accel, and Bond.

“I mean, not surprisingly, we’re pretty bullish on CLM,” Ironclad CEO Daniel Springer said on a call.

He’s swaggering in a moment when the category is routinely declared dead. Springer bet his career on it. Early last year, he was a free agent, having stepped down as CEO of Docusign in 2022. He said he spoke to 40 companies before taking the Ironclad job in April. Since then, Springer’s been recruiting heavily, pulling in chief technology officer Sunita Verma, who spent 17 years at Google, and longtime Microsoft engineer Herman Man as Ironclad’s new chief product officer.

Springer said he’s heard the “CLM is dead” debate so many times that he compares it to the endless calls for email’s demise. Ironclad’s view is that the need for companies to contract with each other isn’t going away. What is changing, Verma told Business Insider, is how the work gets done: away from rigid workflow software and toward agentic systems that can do chunks of work on their own.

That shift has turned contract lifecycle management into a high-stakes catch-up game. The same platforms that once won clients by organizing contracts now have to show they can automate what legal teams do inside them. In November, Ironclad released a fleet of virtual assistants that it said can handle tasks such as intake, negotiation, and extracting information buried in contracts. Springer said a third of recent new customers also bought its agentic add-on, Jurist.

In that world, Ironclad isn’t just competing with other CLM vendors like Agiloft and Sirion. It’s facing a swarm of startups built on large language models, including Ivo and Spellbook, that promise to handle pieces of contract review. Even the foundational model makers are moving closer to legal workflows. OpenAI has publicly written about building a contract review tool for its own teams. More recently, Anthropic rolled out a legal plug-in that it says can speed up in-house tasks.

Ironclad eyes dealmaking

Springer said Ironclad is open to doing deals this year as it tries to capture more of the market. Some close competitors are for sale, he said, and he’s looked and passed. He added that he isn’t eager to buy another CLM platform, arguing that many older products “aren’t the platforms of the future.”

Instead, he said Ironclad would consider acquisitions that bring a crack team in-house, especially technical talent building something original that might struggle to break into large enterprise accounts on its own. Industry watchers expect more consolidation this year as buyers tire of single-use tools, and more founders start looking for distribution (or a soft landing) inside larger platforms.

Even so, Springer doesn’t think the CLM category is done spawning new entrants. He expects founders will keep building contract software — even if they try to dress it up in new language for the AI era.

“Maybe they won’t call themselves CLM,” he said. “But I will bet you dollars to doughnuts they will call themselves CLM, because that’s what the customer knows.”

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