Keep Calm and Adapt

Software can now write software better than even the most advanced human experts. And where software has gone, the other learned professions will follow. That is the gist of a viral essay titled “Something Big Is Happening” posted to X on 9 February by Matt Shumer, who runs an AI start-up. The time for “cocktail party polite” answers to the question “what’s the deal with AI?” is over, he warns, and it is time to confront people with the scary truth: mass technological unemployment is upon us, and devastation of most other kinds of “cognitive work” will soon follow. His argument focusses on software engineering, and on Claude Code Opus 4.6 and OpenAI Codex 5.3 in particular. Both of these models were released on 6 February, and they are now so good that, he tells us, “I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job.”