Investor Matt Shumer says viral essay wasn’t meant to scare people
Investor Matt Shumer caused quite a stir on social media this week with an article He warned about the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence. More than 80 million views later, he said it was “not meant to scare people.”
“I want to be very clear about this, the intent of the article was not to scare people in that way,” Shumer said on CNBC’s “Power Lunch” on Friday. “If I had known this was going to go this viral, I would have thought about some parts and definitely rewritten some parts.”
Article, “Something Big Is HappeningShumer details his recent experiences using artificial intelligence. Here he argues that the capabilities of AI are underappreciated by the wider public. He compared the state of artificial intelligence to the noise experienced in the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic in February 2020, just before the number of cases increased in the United States.
OpenAI broke into the mainstream with the launch of its AI chatbot ChatGPT in 2022, setting off a high-stakes race for dominance between the company and rivals like Google and Anthropic. Investors are pouring billions of dollars into technology, and Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are expected to spend nearly $700 billion on capital expenditures this year alone.
He wrote that it was a “shock” to discover that AI could perform all the technical work of his business, and Shumer said that professionals in fields such as law, finance, medicine and accounting, among others, will begin to share similar experiences.
Shumer published the article on Tuesday. It has since received more than 100,000 likes and nearly 6,000 comments, according to X. The article sparked a variety of praise and criticism from readers. Looking back, Shumer said he wanted to frame some of the pieces differently.
Despite this, Shumer reiterated his belief that AI could be disruptive for many knowledge workers. He said it was “clear” that AI could do anything that could be done on a computer, but that didn’t necessarily mean it would be immediately adopted or widespread by society.
Shumer said the “key message” he’s trying to convey is that people in the workforce need to start using and experimenting with AI tools so they can figure out what’s going to happen.
“Everybody likes to think that their issues are private,” Shumer said. “For a while, I thought my job was special.”
