The reality of Artificial Intelligence in 2025

Sometimes you just want to be left alone.

Artificial Intelligence is being met with resistance. With every new "paradigm shift" in technology, there are welcoming arms, and arms folded in defiance. It's hard to know what to think about something that, according to some news stories, threatens to replace your job.

There's a collective sigh from the safe careers - firemen and police, construction workers, and those who actually work - and a bit of panic from the college-educated crowd who thought they made the right choice. 

But who really is "safe?" And do we need to be safe or not as AI grows?

We've seen this before.

The last 30 years have spawned a number of life-changing innovations. I remember websites becoming a thing in the mid- to late-90s as I took part in building out one of the first Macintosh websites on the web. It was an exciting time where both individuals and companies were re-thinking and re-imagining the possibilities. It wasn't as easy then as it is now, so there was definitely a learning curve that didn't have YouTube and multiple websites showing you how to create a site.

The first website I worked on as a professional writer/editor was comical. Pushing the boundaries of website design, it was a complex assemblage of dozens of separate frames. The homepage took a full minute to fully load on a "high-speed" wired connection. Even though it was created for electrical engineers, it fell victim to the classic early website blunder of trying to be everything to its visitor - a weather app, a clock, a news feed, and whatever trending add-on was popular that month.

Even Yahoo didn't know how to handle this new online world. It's hard to believe now, but Yahoo used to be an online directory of every website on the internet! You could even buy a printed yellow pages directory of the internet at Barnes & Noble called Harley Hahn's Internet and Web Golden Directory.