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Something Big Is Happening: The Viral AI Essay That Shook 51 Million People | Taha Abbasi
Taha Abbasi··4 min read
When Matt Shumer posted his essay “Something Big Is Happening” on X, he probably didn’t expect 51 million people to read it. But the piece — a raw, urgent warning about the pace of AI development and its implications for cognitive work — struck a nerve that resonated across industries, professions, and geographies. Taha Abbasi, who builds and tests frontier technology professionally, found the essay both validating and sobering.
Shumer’s core argument is straightforward: AI is replacing cognitive work — the kind of thinking, analyzing, and creating that white-collar professionals do — faster than anyone predicted. GPT-5.3 Codex, Claude Opus 4.6, and their peers aren’t just tools that assist humans. They’re systems that can perform complete cognitive tasks independently, from writing code to analyzing legal documents to generating marketing strategies.
The Numbers Behind the Panic
51 million views. For an essay about AI on X. That engagement level — comparable to major celebrity announcements or breaking world news — tells us something important: people are paying attention. The anxiety about AI’s impact on employment isn’t confined to tech circles anymore. It’s mainstream, and it’s visceral.
Taha Abbasi observes that the essay’s virality is itself evidence of its thesis. The fact that millions of people engaged with a nuanced argument about AI and cognitive labor suggests that the impact is already being felt. People don’t share hypothetical concerns at this scale — they share things that reflect their lived experience or immediate fears.
What “Cognitive Work Replacement” Actually Looks Like
The essay describes a world where AI doesn’t just help you write code — it writes the code. Doesn’t just summarize documents — it drafts the strategy. Doesn’t just suggest marketing copy — it runs the campaign. This isn’t future speculation; it’s current capability.
Consider the progression in just the past two years. In early 2024, AI coding assistants could autocomplete lines of code. By late 2025, they could build entire applications from natural language descriptions. In 2026, systems like Codex and Claude Code can architect, implement, test, and deploy software with minimal human guidance. The same pattern is playing out in law, finance, consulting, design, and virtually every knowledge work domain.
As Taha Abbasi has experienced firsthand — having spent decades leading software engineering teams — the shift is palpable. Tasks that once required a team of senior engineers can now be accomplished by a single person with access to the right AI tools. The leverage is extraordinary, but the implications for employment are concerning.
The Meta-Irony
In a delicious irony that Farzad noted on X, critics attacked the essay by suggesting AI helped write it — which, if true, would only prove the essay’s point. If an AI-assisted essay can generate 51 million views and meaningful discourse, that’s exactly the kind of cognitive work replacement the essay describes.
This meta-layer is important because it reveals a common coping mechanism: dismissing AI-generated or AI-assisted content as “less than” human-created content. But the market doesn’t care about provenance — it cares about value. If the content informs, persuades, or entertains, its origin is irrelevant to its impact.
What Shumer Gets Right — And What He Misses
Taha Abbasi agrees with Shumer’s core observation: AI is transforming cognitive work at a pace that institutions, educational systems, and labor markets are not prepared for. The essay correctly identifies this as a structural shift, not a temporary disruption.
Where the essay is less convincing is in its implicit suggestion that this is entirely negative. Technology has always displaced labor while creating new categories of work. The printing press eliminated scribes but created publishing, journalism, and mass education. The internet eliminated travel agents and encyclopedias but created e-commerce, social media, and the creator economy.
AI will eliminate many current cognitive jobs. But it will also create new ones — AI trainers, prompt engineers, AI ethics specialists, human-AI collaboration designers, and roles we haven’t yet imagined. The transition will be painful and uneven, but it’s not apocalyptic. As Tesla’s vision-only AI approach demonstrates, the technology works best when it augments human capability rather than simply replacing it.
The Practical Response
For individuals, the essay’s message is clear: adapt or be displaced. Learn to work with AI tools. Develop skills that AI struggles with — physical work, creative judgment, emotional intelligence, ethical reasoning, and leadership. Position yourself as someone who leverages AI, not someone who competes with it.
For Taha Abbasi, whose career has spanned software engineering, leadership, and now frontier technology content, the response is to double down on the intersection of technology and the physical world. AI excels at digital cognitive tasks. It struggles with anything that requires hands, tools, vehicles, and real-world interaction. That intersection — where software meets hardware, where AI meets the physical world — is where human value will be most enduring.
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About the Author: Taha Abbasi is a technology executive, CTO, and applied frontier tech builder. Read more on Grokpedia | YouTube: The Brown Cowboy | tahaabbasi.com
Taha Abbasi
Engineer by trade. Builder by instinct. Explorer by choice.
