Frankenstein’s Laptop
One of the ironies of the story of AI’s impact on jobs is that it came first for the companies that helped create it. Recently, software as a service (SaaS) companies that can potentially be disrupted by AI have been experiencing what investors are calling the SaaSpocalypse — a result of “Anthropic and then Open AI launching agentic AI systems for enterprises that appear to perform some key functions currently provided by SaaS players, undermining their business models.” And these market forces are hitting companies in every sector. Earlier this week, logistics and freight companies took a hit “after a little-known Florida company announced a new tool that would scale freight volumes without increasing headcount. (By the way, until this year, that little-known company was in the Karaoke business.) But the new tech is hitting the tech sector the most directly. The disruptors are being disrupted by a force they themselves unleashed. Like many in tech, Matt Shumer has had a front row seat for the impending changes (and more time to ponder them as some of his technical duties have been offloaded to the machine). In his essay, Something Big is Happening Here, he explains what’s coming, not just for his industry, but for everything, and compares this moment to just before the pandemic hit. “Think back to February 2020. If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren’t paying close attention. The stock market was doing great, your kids were in school, you were going to restaurants and shaking hands and planning trips. If someone told you they were stockpiling toilet paper you would have thought they’d been spending too much time on a weird corner of the internet. Then, over the course of about three weeks, the entire world changed. Your office closed, your kids came home, and life rearranged itself into something you wouldn’t have believed if you’d described it to yourself a month earlier. I think we’re in the ‘this seems overblown’ phase of something much, much bigger than Covid. I’ve spent six years building an AI startup and investing in the space. I live in this world. And I’m writing this for the people in my life who don’t… my family, my friends … The people I care about deserve to hear what is coming, even if it sounds crazy.”
+ And just in case the impending pace of change does sound crazy, it’s worth noting that there is a lot of consensus about what’s coming. Microsoft AI CEO predicts ‘most, if not all’ white-collar tasks will be automated by AI within 18 months. (Luckily, summarizing the news in 2026 is so depressing, even the machines don’t want my gig.)
+ Scheduling Note: NextDraft will be off for most, and probably all, of next week, unless, you know, something really newsworthy breaks into the break.
