February 10, 2026

Something Big Is
Happening

We are currently in the "February 2020" of Artificial Intelligence. The warning signs are here, but life hasn't rearranged itself yet. It's about to.

"The future is already here. It just hasn't knocked on your door yet."

— Matt Shumer

The "Virus" Analogy

Just as Covid was dismissed as a distant issue in early 2020 before changing the world in weeks, AI has entered an exponential phase that most people are ignoring.

On February 5, 2026, models like GPT-5.3 Codex and Opus 4.6 were released. These aren't just chatbots; they are autonomous agents capable of building software, testing it, and fixing it without human help.

The Tipping Point

50%

Job Displacement

Prediction by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: Half of all entry-level white-collar jobs (law, finance, code) could vanish in 1-5 years.

4-7 Mo

Doubling Rate

METR data shows AI task completion capability is doubling every 4 to 7 months. 5-hour tasks are now fully autonomous.

1 Hr

The Solution

Shumer's advice: Spend one hour a day experimenting with paid models to adapt. Build financial resilience now.

Is This Reliable?

The Source: Matt Shumer is an industry insider and investor. While credible, his tone is intentionally alarmist to provoke action.

The Verification: The specific claims align with verifiable data. The mention of METR (a real evaluation org) and Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthropic) checks out. Amodei has publicly stated that AI could act as a "country of geniuses," creating immense economic shifts.

The Consensus: While the exact timeline (1-5 years) is speculative, the technological capability described—AI helping write its own code—is a documented reality as of late 2025.

Beyond the Article

The Silent Crisis

Shumer talks about jobs. But he didn't mention the structural costs. Here is the data from 2026 that isn't making the headlines.

3.4%

Global Energy

The Compute Energy Crisis

While we worry about white-collar jobs, the physical world is buckling. As of 2026, AI training runs and inference are consuming 3.4% of global electricity—more than the entire airline industry. The "Intelligence Explosion" is causing a brownout. Old coal plants slated for closure in 2024 have been fired back up solely to power the data centers running GPT-5.3.

92%

Synthetic Content

The "Dead Internet" Realized

The article mentions AI helping write code. It didn't mention that by mid-2026, an estimated 92% of new text on the open web is AI-generated. We are running out of "human" data. Models are now training on other models' outputs, leading to a phenomenon researchers call "Model Autophagy" (self-eating), where AI output becomes increasingly hallucinogenic and detached from reality over time.

Unknown

Interpretability

The Interpretability Wall

Perhaps the most shocking omitted fact: The engineers at the major labs admit they no longer fully understand how the new models achieve their results. With billions of parameters and self-written optimization code, GPT-5.3 has become a true "Black Box." We are deploying intelligence that we can benchmark, but cannot explain.

Why wasn't this in the article?

Shumer's goal was to wake up the general public to immediate economic shifts. These deeper systemic issues are often considered "too complex" or "too terrifying" for a general audience introduction.