The Zoom Moment Is Happening Again (And Most People Don't See It)

Think back to 2020, when everyone suddenly went remote because of Covid.

Remember the stories? People showing up to Zoom calls with their cameras on and not realizing it. Getting caught in their underwear. Walking around their bedrooms. Having full conversations with their spouses while their entire team watched. One guy got fired for getting caught with his pants literally down on a work call. These were not teenagers. These were professionals. Lawyers. Executives. People who had been working for decades. And they did not know their computer had a camera. Or they did not know how to turn it off. Or they did not think to check if it was on.

We laughed at those stories. We shared them. We felt secondhand embarrassment for those people. But here is what nobody said at the time. Those people were not stupid. They just had not needed to know how computers worked until suddenly they did. And by the time they figured it out, everyone else had already seen them half dressed.

I think about those stories a lot now. Because I think we are in that same moment again. Except this time it is not about Zoom cameras. It is about something much bigger.

Here is what I know for sure

I use these tools every single day. Multiple times a day. All day long. They have become as important to how I work as email or my phone. And even with all that use, I know I am barely scratching the surface of what is possible.

That gap keeps me up at night. The gap between what I am doing and what I could be doing. Between what these tools can already do and what most people think they can do. Between the world we are living in and the world my kids are going to inherit.

But here is what really opened my eyes. It was not my own experience that showed me how transformative this technology is. It was watching my daughters.

My thirteen year old runs an actual business

A few months ago, Samantha came to Mark and me about highlights in her hair. But she did not just ask. She came prepared.

She had used ChatGPT to look up how much highlighting costs upfront and what it costs to maintain. She researched the downsides and risks of dying hair at her age. She even generated images of herself with different highlight options so we could see what she was talking about.

Then she told us she would pay for it herself. With money from her cake and cookie business.

Not a lemonade stand. An actual business. She has an LLC. She used ChatGPT to help her figure out recipes. To help her think through pricing. To understand her costs and profit margins. She used Canva to make a logo. She used Gemini to create marketing images.

She is thirteen years old and she runs a registered business. And the tools did most of the technical work. She just had to know what to ask for.

And it is not just Samantha

Savi is nine. She uses video tools to make short movies with her friends. She asked ChatGPT to help her plan out a YouTube channel. What kind of videos to make, how often to post, best 20 questions to ask for an interview so her audience can get to know her, that kind of thing. Again, she is nine. I could not have done that at nine. I remember when we bought an electric typewriter that had a backspace that would white-out the typo.

Scarlet is seven. She asks Alexa to make up bedtime stories for her. Different stories every night. Whatever she is in the mood for. Princess stories, adventure stories, stories about cats. She just asks and it happens.

And Mark is completely obsessed with this stuff. He sends me what feels like 752 messages a day about new tools and articles about where this is all headed. He uses these tools for what we are building constantly. He sees what is coming. We are building and scaling in directions led by AI movements.

We are living it in our house. Every single day. And here is the thing that keeps me up at night. I often feel guilty that we let them use Alexa and ChatGPT so young. Like maybe we should have been more careful or more restrictive. But now I am starting to think the opposite. Now I am worried we are not moving fast enough. That even with all of this, we are still behind where we should be.

What this means for everyone else

Let me be direct about what is actually happening right now. Not what might happen someday. What is happening today.

Dario Amodei is the CEO of Anthropic. That is the company that makes Claude, one of the main competitors to ChatGPT. He said publicly that he expects these tools to eliminate fifty percent of entry level office jobs within one to five years. Fifty percent. And many people who work in this industry think he is being too conservative.

Let me say that again differently. Half of the jobs where people sit at a desk and work on a computer could be gone in the next few years. Not reduced. Not changed. Gone.

This is not like previous waves of automation. When factories automated, workers could retrain for office jobs. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into other services. There was always somewhere else to go.

This is different. These tools are not replacing one specific skill. They are replacing thinking itself. And they are getting better at everything at the same time. Whatever you retrain for, they are improving at that too.

Let me make this concrete so you understand what I mean.

Legal work. These tools can already read contracts, summarize cases, draft legal documents, and do research at a level that matches junior lawyers. A managing partner at a major law firm told me he uses these tools for hours every day because they outperform his associates on many tasks. He is not using them because they are interesting. He is using them because they work better.

Financial analysis. Building financial models, analyzing data, writing reports. These tools handle all of this competently right now. And they are improving fast.

Writing and content. Marketing copy, reports, articles, technical writing. The quality has reached a point where most people cannot tell the difference between what a human wrote and what the tool produced.

Software engineering. A year ago, these tools could barely write a few lines of code without errors. Now they write hundreds of thousands of lines that work correctly. People can describe an app they want built, walk away from their computer for four hours, and come back to find it done. Not kind of done. Completely done.

Medical analysis. Reading scans, analyzing lab results, suggesting diagnoses, reviewing research. These tools are approaching or exceeding human performance in several areas.

Customer service. Actually capable automated agents are being deployed now. Not the frustrating chatbots from five years ago. These handle complex problems that require multiple steps.

A lot of people find comfort in the idea that certain things are safe. That these tools can handle the simple work but cannot replace human judgment, creativity, strategic thinking, or empathy. I used to say this too. I am not sure I believe it anymore.

The most recent versions make decisions that feel like judgment. They show something that looks like taste. An intuitive sense of what the right call is, not just the technically correct one. A year ago that would have been impossible. My rule now is simple. If a tool shows even a hint of being able to do something today, the next version will be genuinely good at it. These things improve exponentially, not in a straight line.

I think the honest answer is this. Nothing that can be done on a computer is safe in the medium term. If your job happens on a screen, if the core of what you do is reading, writing, analyzing, deciding, or communicating through a keyboard, then these tools are coming for significant parts of it. The timeline is not someday. It has already started.

Eventually, robots will handle physical work too. They are not quite there yet. But not quite there yet has a way of becoming here faster than anyone expects.

The people who got caught on Zoom were not stupid

I keep coming back to those Zoom stories from 2020. Because the lesson was not that those people were idiots. The lesson was that when technology shifts quickly, the people who do not adapt get left behind in ways that are visible and embarrassing.

That executive who got caught without pants did not lose his job because he was incompetent at his actual work. He lost it because he had not learned a basic new skill that everyone suddenly needed. And by the time he figured it out, it was too late.

I think we are in that moment right now with these tools. Most people have not started using them seriously yet. They have tried ChatGPT once or twice, were not impressed, and moved on. Meanwhile, other people are using these tools to do in one hour what used to take a full day. They are building skills and comfort that are going to matter enormously in the next few years.

And the gap between those two groups is growing fast.

How fast this is actually moving

Let me make the pace of change concrete, because I think this is the part that is hardest to believe if you are not watching closely.

In 2022, these tools could not do basic math reliably. They would confidently tell you that seven times eight equals fifty four.

By 2023, they could pass the bar exam.

By 2024, they could write working software and explain graduate level science.

By late 2025, some of the best engineers in the world said they had handed over most of their coding work to these tools.

In February 2026, new versions arrived that made everything before them feel like a different era.

If you have not tried these tools in the last few months, what exists today would be unrecognizable to you.

There is an organization called METR that actually measures this with data. They track the length of real world tasks, measured by how long they take a human expert, that a tool can complete successfully from start to finish without human help. About a year ago, the answer was roughly ten minutes. Then it was an hour. Then several hours. The most recent measurement showed the tools completing tasks that take a human expert nearly five hours. And that number is doubling approximately every seven months. Recent data suggests it may be accelerating to as fast as every four months.

If you extend the trend, and it has held for years with no sign of stopping, we are looking at tools that can work independently for days within the next year. Weeks within two years. Month long projects within three years.

Dario Amodei has said that systems substantially smarter than almost all humans at almost all tasks are on track for 2026 or 2027.

Let that sink in for a second. If these systems are smarter than most people with PhDs, do you really think they cannot do most office jobs?

Think about what that means for your work. Think about what that means for your kids.

I worry I am not doing enough

Here is what keeps me up at night. My kids started using these tools early. Not because I had some master plan. Just because they were around the house and Mark and I were using them. The girls picked it up naturally.

For a long time, I felt guilty about it. I worried we were letting them use technology too young. That maybe we should have been more careful. That other parents were probably being more responsible by keeping this stuff away from their kids.

But now I am starting to think the opposite. Now I worry that even though they started early, I am not moving fast enough. That I do not have a real plan for teaching them how to use these tools. That I am just letting it happen instead of being intentional about it.

Samantha figured out how to use ChatGPT to research hair highlighting costs and risks on her own. I did not teach her that. She used it to help with her business because she saw me using similar tools for work. I did not sit down and show her how.

Savi learned to use video tools and ask ChatGPT for help with her YouTube idea by just playing around. Scarlet asks Alexa for stories because she saw her sisters doing it.

They are learning, but I am not teaching. And that gap worries me. Because I can see how important this is going to be for their futures, and I feel like I am not doing enough to prepare them.

My kids are not special

I want to be really clear about something. My daughters are just normal kids. They are not technology geniuses. They are not child prodigies. Samantha does not have some natural business sense. Savi is not a professional filmmaker. Scarlet is not unusually creative.

They just started using these tools early and got comfortable with them. That is it. That is the whole advantage.

Samantha did not know how to figure out pricing or profit margins. ChatGPT walked her through it. She did not have design skills. Canva made it easy. The tools did the heavy lifting. She just learned that she could ask them for help.

And that is what scares me about other kids. Most of them are not learning this. They are doing homework the old way. Writing essays from scratch without any help. Doing research by reading articles one by one. Learning the same way their parents did.

And in a few years, those kids are going to be competing with kids like mine for jobs and opportunities. Kids who can do in an hour what takes others all day. Kids who are comfortable building things they do not know how to create. Kids who grew up thinking of these tools as normal.

That is not a fair fight. And most parents have no idea it is coming.

Why most people have no idea this is happening

I hear this constantly from people I care about. They say they tried it and it was not impressive.

And I get it. I really do.

If you tried these tools a year or two ago and were not blown away, you were not wrong. They were genuinely limited. They made things up. They were more novelty than tool.

But that was a long time ago in this world.

The stuff that is available right now is completely different. Not incrementally better. Fundamentally different. And most people have no idea, because they tried it once in 2023, decided it was not worth their time, and have not looked back.

Meanwhile, the gap between what they think these tools can do and what they actually do has gotten enormous.

Part of the problem is that most people are using the free version. The free version is over a year behind what paying users have access to. Judging these tools based on free versions is like evaluating the state of smartphones by using a flip phone. The people paying for the best tools, and actually using them daily for real work, know what is coming.

I think about conversations I have with friends who are doctors, lawyers, accountants, managers. Smart people. Successful people. And when this topic comes up, they will say something like yeah, I played around with it, it is neat but not really useful for what I do.

And I want to tell them. You are about to be the person caught without pants on the Zoom call. Not because you are incompetent. But because you did not learn the new skill fast enough.

What you should actually do

I am not writing this to make you feel helpless. I am writing this because I think the single biggest advantage you can have right now is simply being early. Early to understand it. Early to use it. Early to adapt.

Start using these tools seriously, not just as a search engine. Sign up for the paid version of Claude or ChatGPT. It is twenty dollars a month. But two things matter right away.

First, make sure you are using the best version available, not just the default. These apps often default to a faster, less capable version. Dig into the settings and select the most capable option. Right now that is GPT 5.2 on ChatGPT or Claude Opus 4.6 on Claude, but it changes every couple of months.

Second, and more important, do not just ask it quick questions. That is the mistake most people make. They treat it like Google and then wonder what the fuss is about.

Instead, do what Samantha did. Give it a real project. Something that matters. If you are a lawyer, feed it a contract and ask it to find every clause that could hurt your client. If you are in finance, give it a messy spreadsheet and ask it to build the model. If you are a manager, paste in your team's quarterly data and ask it to find the story.

The people who are getting ahead are not using these tools casually. They are actively looking for ways to automate parts of their job that used to take hours. Start with the thing you spend the most time on and see what happens.

And do not assume it cannot do something just because it seems too hard. Try it. The first attempt might not be perfect. That is fine. Rephrase what you asked. Give it more context. Try again. You might be shocked at what works.

And here is the thing to remember. If it even kind of works today, you can be almost certain that in six months it will do it nearly perfectly. The trajectory only goes one direction.

This might be the most important year of your career. Work accordingly. I do not say that to stress you out. I say it because right now, there is a brief window where most people at most companies are still ignoring this. The person who walks into a meeting and says I used this tool to do this analysis in an hour instead of three days is going to be the most valuable person in the room. Not eventually. Right now.

Learn these tools. Get proficient. Demonstrate what is possible. If you are early enough, this is how you move up. By being the person who understands what is coming and can show others how to navigate it. That window will not stay open long. Once everyone figures it out, the advantage disappears.

Have no ego about it. The managing partner at that law firm is not too proud to spend hours a day with these tools. He is doing it specifically because he is senior enough to understand what is at stake. The people who will struggle most are the ones who refuse to engage. The ones who dismiss it as a fad, who feel that using these tools diminishes their expertise, who assume their field is special and immune. It is not. No field is.

Get your kids involved now

This is the part that keeps me up at night. Not my own career. My kids' future.

Get them using these tools for their schoolwork. Not to cheat, but to learn how to work with them. To use them as a tutor. To learn to ask good questions. To develop the skill of knowing what to ask for and how to evaluate what comes back.

Have them build things. Little projects. Experiments. It does not matter what. Samantha started a real business with an LLC. Savi is planning a YouTube channel. Your kid might want to design a video game or write a story or plan a garden. The specific project does not matter. The point is getting comfortable with the idea that you can create things you do not fully know how to build yourself.

Most importantly, help them see these tools as a normal part of how work gets done. Not as a separate tech thing. Because by the time they enter the workforce, knowing how to use these tools will not be a special skill. It will be like knowing how to use email. The baseline expectation.

The kids who learn this early are going to have an enormous advantage. Not because they are smarter. Not because they are more talented. Just because they are comfortable with tools that other kids avoided.

Get your financial house in order

I am not a financial advisor, and I am not trying to scare you into anything drastic. But if you believe, even partially, that the next few years could bring real disruption to your industry, then basic financial resilience matters more than it did a year ago.

Build up savings if you can. Be cautious about taking on new debt that assumes your current income is guaranteed. Think about whether your fixed expenses give you flexibility or lock you in. Give yourself options if things move faster than you expect.

Think about where you stand

Some things will take longer to be replaced. Relationships and trust built over years. Work that requires physical presence. Roles with licensed accountability. Roles where someone still has to sign off, take legal responsibility, stand in a courtroom. Industries with heavy regulatory hurdles, where adoption will be slowed by compliance, liability, and rules.

None of these are permanent shields. But they buy time. And time, right now, is the most valuable thing you can have. As long as you use it to adapt, not to pretend this is not happening.

Rethink the standard playbook

The standard playbook is get good grades, go to a good college, land a stable professional job. That playbook points directly at the roles that are most exposed right now.

I am not saying education does not matter. But the thing that will matter most for the next generation is learning how to work with these tools, and pursuing things they are genuinely passionate about.

Nobody knows exactly what the job market looks like in ten years. But the people most likely to thrive are the ones who are deeply curious, adaptable, and effective at using these tools to do things they actually care about.

Teach your kids to be builders and learners. Not to optimize for a career path that might not exist by the time they graduate.

Your dreams just got a lot closer

I have spent most of this talking about threats, so let me talk about the other side, because it is just as real.

If you have ever wanted to build something but did not have the technical skills or the money to hire someone, that barrier is largely gone. You can describe what you want and have a working version quickly.

If you have always wanted to write a book but could not find the time or struggled with the writing, you can work with these tools to get it done. Want to learn a new skill? The best tutor in the world is now available to anyone for twenty dollars a month. One that is infinitely patient, available twenty four seven, and can explain anything at whatever level you need.

Knowledge is essentially free now. The tools to build things are extremely cheap now. Whatever you have been putting off because it felt too hard or too expensive or too far outside your expertise, try it.

Pursue the things you are passionate about. You never know where they will lead. And in a world where the old career paths are getting disrupted, the person who spent a year building something they love might end up better positioned than the person who spent that year clinging to a job description.

The honest truth

I do not have this figured out. Not even close.

I use these tools constantly and I am still discovering things I should have been using them for months ago. I am still learning what they are actually good at. I am still surprised by what they can handle.

And my kids? Yes, they use these tools. Yes, they are ahead of most of their peers because they started early. But I did not plan that. It happened because the tools were around the house. And now I am trying to be more intentional about it, because I can see how important it is. But I still feel like I am not moving fast enough.

The people who figure this out first, who really learn to work with these tools, who get comfortable with them, who develop good instincts for what to hand off and what to keep, those people are going to have an enormous edge.

And I want that for my kids. I want that for myself. I want that for everyone I care about.

But it requires actually doing something about it. Not just reading about this technology, or having opinions about it, or waiting to see what happens. Actually using it. Actually experimenting. Actually pushing past the initial this is weird feeling and building real comfort with it.

That is what I am working on. And if you care about staying relevant in the next few years, if you care about your kids being prepared for what is coming, I think you should be working on it too.

The time to start is right now. Not because some dramatic change is coming eventually.

Because it is already here. And the people who do not learn how to use it are going to be the ones caught with their pants down.