welcome back to the deep dive i have to be uh
honest with you right off the bat today's stack
of research it just feels different it really
goes usually we're looking at a trend or a new
piece of tech maybe a historical event but today
yeah today we're analyzing a vibration a vibration
that's a good word for it there's a a distinct
shift in the atmosphere isn't there yeah we've
spent And I mean years in this sort of theoretical
phase of artificial intelligence. We've been
talking about what might happen, what could happen.
The someday phase. Exactly. The someday phase.
Yeah. But looking at the sources for today, it
feels like we've just violently crossed a threshold.
We're not. in theory anymore. We've slammed into
tangible reality. Exactly. And the catalyst for
this deep dive, the thing that actually triggered
us to sit down and record this, is a viral article
that has absolutely exploded across the Internet.
It's a piece by Matt Schumer titled Something
Big is Happening. And when I say exploded, I'm
not just talking about a niche tech bubble. No,
this is different. This is over 40 million views
on X. I mean, it is everywhere. It's being shared
in tech circles, sure. But I'm seeing it from
artists, accountants, teachers, people who usually
just scroll right past this stuff. It's crossed
the membrane. It has. Which is usually the primary
sign, you know, that the signals become too loud
to ignore. What Schumer... captures in this piece
is what i'd call a jolt a jolt it's a jolt of
collective realization it's that specific identifiable
moment where all this fringe tech talk we've
been following just crashes violently into mainstream
consciousness jolt is the perfect word for it
reading it i felt this this physical knot in
my stomach not necessarily fear though there's
some of that in there but Vertigo is a great
way to put it. It feels like everyone is suddenly
waking up to something huge all at once. Schumer
frames it as an immediate disruptor. He's not
saying this is five years away. He's saying it's
happening right now. Today. Precisely. But here's
the fascinating twist we are going to take for
this deep dive. Schumer is ringing the alarm
bell and he is absolutely right to do so. Yeah.
We need to hear it. Right. But if we only listen
to the alarm, we just panic. We run around in
circles. We map. We need to know where we are.
We need to know where we're going. OK, let's
unpack that, because while Schumer is the trigger,
he's not the mapmaker here. This is where we
pivot to our second and honestly, our more substantial
source for today. Correct. If Schumer is the
lookout in the crow's nest shouting iceberg head.
Or maybe land ho, depending on your perspective.
The navigator who drew the charts for this exact
ocean years ago is Brian Ramell. Brian Ramell?
He's a futurist, the founder of readmultiplex
.com. And he has been chronicling the ascent
of AI since the 1980s. I mean, this is his life's
work. So this deep dive is really a special read
multiplex deep dive because we are going to look
at Schumer's viral moment through the lens of
Rimmel's framework. And specifically his massive
body of work called the 5 ,000 Days series. Which,
and this is the crazy part, he launched way back
in December 2025. The premise of our discussion
today is essentially this. Matt Schumer's viral
warning. It's exactly what Brian Rommel predicted
would happen right now, almost to the day. That's
uncanny. It is. So our mission is to analyze
Schumer's jolt through the framework of Rommel's
5 ,000 days. And this is the really interesting
part, the hero's journey. I love that. So we
aren't just looking at what is happening, the
tech, the models, the disruption. We're looking
at where we are on the map of history. It helps
quell the panic a bit when you realize someone
saw this coming and actually wrote a syllabus
for it. It structures the chaos. Yeah. And we
need structure right now more than ever. Absolutely.
So let's start with the signal itself. Let's
deconstruct Matt Schumer's something big is happening.
What exactly is he saying that got 40 million
people to stop scrolling and pay attention? Because
let's be honest, people scroll past AI is coming
posts all day long. All day. Why did this one
stick? Well, Schumer's core argument resonates
because it's about two things. Speed and irreversibility.
Yeah. And he anchors it with a comparison that
everyone globally has a visceral memory of. COVID
-19. COVID -19. Think back to March 2020. Do
you remember that specific week, that one week
where everything changed? Vividly. I remember
it almost on a day by day basis. It was like
one day the world was normal and the next day
the NBA was canceled. Borders were closing and
everyone was like washing their groceries. Exactly.
It wasn't a gradual transition where we slowly
adopted masks and remote. work over a decade,
it was an immediate system -wide shock. A hard
stop. A hard stop. Schumer is arguing that the
release of these recent AI models is that same
level of disruptor. He's telling us that the
normal world, the one we knew last month, it
ended yesterday. And we're just now realizing
we're in the new one. And he's not being vague.
He names names. He's not talking about some generic
AI in the clouds. No, he's very specific. He's
talking about recent releases like OpenAI's GPT
5 .3 codecs. And anthropic's OOP is 4 .6. Yeah.
And the distinction he makes is vital. For a
long time, skeptics, and frankly many of us,
dismissed AI as stochastic parrots. You know,
just fancy autocomplete. Predicting the next
word based on probability. Right. Just remixing
what it's already seen. No real understanding.
Schumer says we have moved past that paradigm.
He's arguing we are now dealing with systems
that possess, and these are his words, judgment.
taste, and the ability to self -improve. Okay,
that self -improve part. That is where it gets
really interesting and honestly a little scary.
That feels like the sci -fi line we weren't supposed
to cross for another 50 years. It's the mechanism
of what theorists call the intelligence explosion.
Schumer points out that we are entering a phase
where these models can debug their own code.
Which means they can. They can accelerate their
own development. So let's break that down in
simple terms. A human, a person, writes a piece
of code. It has a bug. The human has to sleep.
Drink coffee, stare at the screen for hours,
maybe ask a colleague. Right. It's a slow biological
process. And then they fix the bug. That takes
time. A lot of time. Right. But now the AI writes
the code. The AI tests the code. The AI finds
the bug. The AI fixes the bug. And it does this
loop, this entire cycle in milliseconds. 24 hours
a day. Seven days a week. Yeah. With no coffee
breaks, no weekends, no sleeping. So it's a recursive
loop. The AI builds a better AI, which immediately
starts building an even better AI. Exactly. And
that creates an exponential curve. It's the classic
hockey stick graph, but for intelligence itself.
And this is the disconnect. Humans adapt linearly.
We learn a new skill. We practice. We get better
over months and years. That's a straight line.
It's a straight line. But AI is improving at
a rate that is, well, vertical compared to our
horizontal adaptation. This is why Schumer predicts
that vast swaths of cognitive work could be rendered
obsolete within one to five years. One to five
years. One to five. That's nothing. That is a
blink of an eye in career terms. That's less
time than it takes to get a college degree. So
if I'm a junior developer right now or a copywriter
or an accountant and I'm reading that, I'm panicking.
I'm thinking, I just spent four years and $100
,000 on a degree for this. Which is why his call
to action is so aggressive. He's not saying keep
an eye on this. He's not saying learn about AI
in your spare time. He's saying experiment with
AI tools daily, not weekly, daily. Build financial
resilience immediately. Start saving like your
job depends on it because it does. And rethink
your education and career path now. He's practically
screaming at the reader to wake up. It's the
adapt or die speech. It's harsh, but maybe it's
necessary if that timeline is even remotely accurate.
In a sense, yes. But this is where we really
need to widen the lens. Schumer provides the
immediate shock. He's the smelling salts that
wake you up. But Brian Romomo provides the context
of why you woke up and, more importantly, where
you are now that you're awake. Let's bring in
the 5 ,000 days framework. Because when Schumer
posted this, I have to imagine Romomo's longtime
readers were just nodding their heads saying,
yep, here we go. It's starting. They absolutely
were. I mean, Brian Rummel has a bit of an I
told you so moment right now, though he's always
very gracious about it. He launched the 5000
Days series to describe what he calls the abundance
interregnum. Abundance interregnum. OK, that
sounds incredibly heavy and academic. Let's unpack
that. What does it actually mean? An interregnum
is a pause or an interruption between two periods
of rule. Historically, it's like when a king
dies and the successor hasn't been crowned yet.
Okay, a chaotic in -between time. Exactly. The
old laws don't quite apply anymore, but the new
laws aren't written yet. It's a time of flux,
of uncertainty, of chaos. So we are in the gap
between two worlds. Rommel posits that we are
entering a transitional period of roughly 13
.7 years, which is about 5 ,000 days. We're moving
from the world we know, a world defined by scarcity
and labor for survival. The world of the 9 -to
-5 job. The world of the 9 -to -5, yes, to a
destination he calls unprecedented plenitude.
A world where we don't have to work to survive.
That sounds like Star Trek. That sounds like
a utopia. The destination is utopian. The destination
is a world where energy, intelligence, and goods
are effectively free or close to it. But... And
this is the big flashing neon, but we have to
get through the 5 ,000 days first. Right, the
journey. And Rommel describes this journey not
as a smooth ride on a bullet train, but as a
crucible of change. So the destination is paradise,
but the journey is hell. The journey is upheaval.
It's the storm Schumer is feeling right now.
Rommel predicted that before we get to the abundance,
we have to go through the complete deconstruction
of the current economic order. You can't build
the new world on top of the old one without tearing
some things down first. And the alignment between
their predictions is it's spooky. It's not just
AI will be good or AI will be disruptive. It's
the specifics. It's incredibly precise. Let's
take coding, for example. Schumer points out
that AI writing apps in code is the tip of the
spear. He says the new models are basically software
engineers in a box. Ruremel, years ago, identified
coding proficiency as the catalyst for broader
AI autonomy. He argued that once AI mastered
code, the language of its own creation, the language
of logic, it would unlock everything else. So
teaching them to code was basically giving them
the keys to the library and the ability to rewrite
all the books, including the ones about themselves.
Essentially. It was the let there be light moment
for machine intelligence. Another parallel. Ruemmel
predicted that 50 % or more of white -collar
jobs, law, finance, software, media, would be
disrupted. Not blue -collar jobs, not at first,
the cognitive ones. The ones we were all told
were safe. The very same. And he was specific
about the irreversibility. Both Schumer and Ruemmel
agree on this point. There was no going back.
In previous economic shifts, like when manufacturing
left a region in the U .S. or Europe, people
were told to retrain. The mantra for decades
was learn to code. Learn to code was the meme.
It was the solution to everything. Oh, the coal
mine closed. Just learn Python. The factory shut
down. There's a coding boot camp for that. But
what happens when the thing you are retraining
to do is also being automated by the machine?
There's nowhere to run. Exactly. AI's generality
covers the adjacent fields, too. You can't just
pivot from being a paralegal to a copywriter
if the AI is doing both of those things better
than any human. You can't pivot to coding if
the AI is the best coder in the world. That's
the daunting part. There's no safe harbor. In
previous industrial revolutions, you could move
from the farm to the factory. From the factory
to the office, you could move to the safe job.
Right. Now, the safe jobs, the ones that require
a college degree, are the ones being targeted
first. Exactly. The cognitive jobs are the target.
And this brings us to what Rommel calls the syllabus
of change. He actually breaks down this 5 ,000
-day period into specific phases or parts. It's
like a curriculum for the end of the world as
we know it. Okay, I need to see the syllabus.
Let's walk through it. Part one is the call to
adventure. Yes. And he frames this in very human
terms. He focuses heavily on the class of 2026
and on mid -career professionals. He identifies
this moment right now as the time when traditional
career paths begin to just vanish. So the call
to adventure is basically a warning siren. It
is. It's the realization that the degree you
are currently studying for might be obsolete
before you even graduate. Imagine being a sophomore
in computer science right now. The job you're
training for might not exist in the same way
in two years. That is a terrifying thought for
a parent paying tuition right now. You're buying
a ticket to a destination that doesn't exist
anymore. It is. And that fear, that sheer cognitive
dissonance, leads directly to part two of the
syllabus. The refusal of the call. The denial.
The psychological denial. We see this everywhere,
every day. It's the AI can't do what I do. It
has no soul. Clients will always want a human
touch. It hallucinates sometimes, so it's useless.
I hear that constantly. AI can write copy, but
it can't understand the nuance of my brand. Or
AI can't really negotiate a complex legal contract.
That is the refusal of the call. It's a defense
mechanism, and it's understandable. But Ramon
warns that this denial is incredibly dangerous
because it wastes your most precious resource.
Time. Time. While you are arguing about whether
the AI has a soul, the AI is learning to do your
job for one one -thousandth of the cost. Okay,
so after denial, he moves to part three, which
uses this really cool historical analogy, the
player piano. I honestly hadn't thought about
player pianos in years, but this analogy really,
really clicked for me. This is one of my favorite
parts of his entire analysis. It's so clarifying.
Yeah. Think about the player piano in the late
19th and early 20th centuries. Before that machine
existed, if you wanted to hear music in a saloon
or in your home, what did you need? A person.
A pianist. A human had to play it. It was a skill.
It was a job. A pianist was a necessary economic
unit for music to exist in that space. And this
machine comes along. You put in a perforated
paper roll, you pump the pedals, and the keys
move by themselves. Exactly. It replicated the
pianist's performance perfectly every single
time. Didn't get drunk. It didn't ask for a raise.
It completely disrupted the livelihood of thousands
of saloon pianists and musicians. It turned the
act of performance into a commodity you could
just buy and play automatically. So Romell is
using this as a template for how AI generates
content. We are facing a player piano moment
for all cognitive output. For everything. Writing,
coding, design, analysis, strategy. It's all
becoming a piano roll. The text I'm writing,
the code you generate. It's just a pattern on
a roll now. Yes. The machine can play the tune
without the musician being present in the room.
The soul of the musician. ineffable human quality
isn't required for the music to be heard anymore.
That's a powerful and slightly chilling analogy.
And it leads directly to part five of his syllabus,
de -skilling. This is one that really stuck with
me because Schumer says use AI daily, which makes
total sense. You have to learn the tool. Right.
But Romella adds this layer of nuance, this warning
about the erosion of human expertise. It's a
paradox. It's a real tightrope walk. You must
use it to stay relevant, but if you rely on it
completely, you erode your own capabilities.
Rommel warns specifically about the loss of tacit
knowledge. Tacit knowledge. That's the stuff
that isn't in the manual, right? The gut feelings,
the intuition. Exactly. It's the stuff you can't
write down. It's the experienced surgeon who
knows something is wrong before the monitors
show it. It's the senior engineer who can just
look at a piece of code and know it's going to
cause problems, even if it's technically correct.
It's the why. It's understanding why a piece
of code works, not just that it works. If the
AI writes the code and your job is just to check
it for errors, eventually you forget how to write
the code from scratch. You lose the ability to
reason through the problem from first principles.
It's like using a GPS. I'm embarrassed to admit
this, but I don't really know how to get anywhere
in my own city anymore because I just follow
the blue line on the map. If the GPS breaks or
there's no signal, I'm genuinely lost. I've offloaded
that mental map to the machine. Precisely. That
is the human -in -the -loop problem on a personal
scale. If we de -skill too much, we become helpless
passengers. Rommel argues we need to maintain
our agency. We need to be the captain of the
ship using the advanced navigation tools, not
just becoming cargo in the hold. And then, after
this process of de -skilling, comes part six,
the dark night of the soul. That sounds ominous.
It is, but it's a necessary part of the journey.
This is the emotional core of the transition.
It is the period of existential doubt when the
job is actually gone or the threat of it being
gone is undeniable. The identity crisis. A global
identity crisis. We tie so much of our identity,
our self -worth, to what we do for a living.
I am a lawyer. I'm a truck driver. I'm a graphic
designer. When that economic value is stripped
away, we are left asking, who am I? What is my
purpose? That's heavy, but it's so real. Schumer's
article hints at this panic, the urgency, but
Rommel gives it a name. He validates that feeling
of dread. If I'm not the guy who writes code,
then what is my value to my family, to society?
But, and here's where the framing is absolutely
vital. Rommel doesn't leave us in the dark. This
isn't a doomsday prediction. He uses Joseph Campbell's
monomyth, the hero's journey, to structure this
chaos. I love this. Connecting ancient myth to
futuristic tech. It grounds it, makes it feel
human. So how does the hero's journey map onto
the AI revolution? Well, think about the classic
stages. First, you have the ordinary world. That's
the pre -AI stability we're just now leaving.
The 9 to 5, the career ladder, the predictable
path. The world where if you worked hard and
followed the rules, you got promoted. That world
feels like a distant memory already. Then comes
the call to adventure. That's the release of
GPT 5 .3. That's Matt Schumer's article popping
up on your screen. It's that external force that
shakes you out of the ordinary world. It's the
universe knocking on your door saying, wake up,
things are changing, and you have to change with
them. Followed by the refusal of the call, which
we already talked about. The denial, it's just
a chatbot, can't do my job. Then we enter the
phase of tests, allies, and enemies. This is,
I think, where we are right now. We are trying
to find our... Abundance transition groups, as
Rowell calls them. We are figuring out who our
allies are in this journey. We're dealing with
the initial economic chaos. We are trying to
figure out which tools are our friends and which
are just distractions. And this leads to the
central challenge, the ordeal, the dark night.
That's the peak of the crisis, the loss of the
job, the confusion about identity. Yes, the moment
of greatest darkness. But in the hero's journey,
what comes after the ordeal? The reward. The
reward. The return with the elixir. Rommel calls
this the artisan's awakening. The artisan's awakening.
That sounds beautiful. What does he mean by that?
It is the idea that once we get through the crucible
of the transition. Once we successfully decouple
human labor from human survival, we return to
creativity and passion. We do things because
we want to, not because we have to pay rent.
So we all become artisans. We bake bread, we
write code, we paint, we solve physics problems,
just for the joy of it. For the craft. That is
the elixir. That is the hope at the end of the
5 ,000 days. Schumer's article is a warning about
the storm. Rommel's framework is the promise
of the beautiful, calm, creative day that comes
after the storm has passed. That perspective
shift is huge. It really is. It turns, oh, my
God, I'm going to lose my job into I am being
called on an adventure and I'm going to have
to go through a fire to become something new.
Exactly. It gives the suffering meaning. It's
not just random economic destruction. It's a
narrative arc. We are the heroes in this story,
not the victims of it. Now, navigating that arc,
that journey, requires dealing with some serious,
deep emotions. And Rommel actually brings another
framework for this, right? He connects it to
Elizabeth Kubler -Ross, the five stages of grief.
He does. Because the death of a career... or
the death of an entire mode of economic existence
is a death. It's a loss. And we have to grieve
the old world before we can fully embrace the
new one. You can't just skip to the acceptance
part. So let's go through them. Stage one, denial.
We've talked about that a lot. It's just hype.
Remember crypto. Remember the metaverse. They
all crashed. AI will fail too. That is pure denial.
Schumer's urgent, almost frantic tone is designed
specifically to try and snap people out of this
stage. Okay, stage two, anger. Ban the bots.
Sue the tech companies. This is theft of artists'
work. We see this with the lawsuits, the regulatory
outcry. It's a natural and understandable reaction
to a perceived threat. People feel like something
is being stolen from them, their livelihood,
their craft. Stage three is bargaining. This
one feels a little more subtle. What does bargaining
look like in this context? Bargaining is the
frantic, panicked upskilling. It's the person
who thinks, OK, if I just learn the specific
prompt engineering technique, I'll be safe. Or
if I just pivot my business into this super specific
niche, the AI won't find me there. It's trying
to make a deal with the inevitable. Yes. It's
trying to find the one magic trick that will
make you immune. But you're saying that's probably
futile. In many cases, yes. Because the AI is
a general intelligence. It learns the niche faster
than you can pivot. Bargaining is like trying
to make a deal with a tidal wave. You might build
a small wall and buy yourself a few months, but
the wave is still coming. Then comes depression.
This is a dark night of the soul. It's the loss
of purpose. It's the artist thinking, why bother
learning to draw for 10 years if the model can
generate a masterpiece in 10 seconds? It's the
translator thinking, why bother learning French
if this earbud translates it perfectly in real
time? This is the danger zone. the point of despair.
And this is where Rommel suggests tools like
Viktor Frankl's work. Exactly. Frankl's man's
search for meaning. The idea that you can find
purpose even in the most dire of circumstances.
The challenge is to decouple your value as a
human from your economic output. You are valuable
because you exist, not because you produce widgets
for a company. That is a profound psychological
shift for most of us. And finally, after all
of that, comes acceptance. The elixir, the artisan's
awakening. This is embracing the abundance. It's
using these powerful tools to expand your human
potential rather than fighting them as a threat.
It's the deep core realization that the AI isn't
replacing you, the conscious being. It's replacing
the drudgery, the boring parts of your job you
never liked anyway. It's a lot to process. I
mean, going through all five of those stages
is a journey in itself. And while individuals
are going through this, there are real world
societal consequences happening. We need to talk
about the edge cases and the broader implications
Rahm highlights. Absolutely. One of the biggest
and perhaps most concerning is what he calls
the laggard penalty. The laggard penalty. What's
that? So Schumer's article has 40 million views.
That's great. It's the democratization of awareness.
But there are eight. billion people on the planet.
Those who adapt early, the people listening to
this, the people who are building AI literacy
right now, they gain massive compounding advantages.
And those who wait. Those who wait or those who
don't have access to this information or who
stay in denial, they face abrupt catastrophic
displacement. The penalty for being a laggard
in this transition is not small. It's potentially
devastating. So inequality, which is already
a huge problem, could skyrocket during this 5
,000 -day transition. It seems extremely likely.
Romello points out the global impact, specifically
on developing economies. Think about a country
like India. with its massive coding and BPO business
process outsourcing workforce. Oh, right. Millions
and millions of jobs answering phones, writing
basic code, handling data entry. It's been the
backbone of the global tech economy for the last
20 years. Those are the exact jobs in the direct
crosshairs of GPT 5 .3 and Opus 4 .6. The disruption
there will be felt much faster and much harder
than in some other sectors. If the AI can handle
tier one customer support or write basic Java
code for nearly free, then... entire economic
model collapses overnight. That is a very sobering
thought. It's not just about my career in a wealthy
country. It's about global stability. And then
there's the flip side of de -skilling, the preservation
of wisdom. We touched on a loss of tacit knowledge,
but Romellon emphasizes the need for individuals
to conduct personal vulnerability audits. A vulnerability
audit. That sounds like something a corporation
does for its cybersecurity. And you should treat
your life and career like a corporation in this
instance. You need to sit down, take a deep breath,
and look at your skills honestly. What do I do
every day? What parts of my job can GPT -5 .3
do right now? Be brutal. No ego. Zero ego. If
the honest answer is it can do 80 % of what I
do for a living, then you are vulnerable. You
need to identify that the remaining 20%, the
tacit knowledge, the human intuition, the relationships,
and double down, triple down on that. That is
your lifeline. That's a fantastic, actionable
step. So let's try to synthesize all of this
for the listener who is maybe feeling that jolt
from Schumer's article right now. We've thrown
a lot of heavy, heavy concepts at them. The core
message is this. Matt Schumer is right. Something
big is happening. The signal is loud and you
must listen to it. But Brian Rongel is also right.
We have a map. The 5 ,000 days isn't a doomsday
clock. It's a countdown to abundance if we navigate
it correctly. So the takeaway isn't panic. It's
prepare. Exactly. Don't panic. Prepare. So immediate
steps for you, the listener. First, do that vulnerability
audit we just talked about tonight. Look at your
skills. Be honest. Second. Second, experimentation.
Do exactly as Schumer says. Use the tools daily.
Develop an intuition for them. Understand the
alien mind, as some people call it. Don't just
treat it like a better Google. Talk to it. Push
it. See where it breaks. See where it surprises
you. That's how you build literacy. And third,
and this feels really important, don't do it
alone. Crucial. Absolutely crucial. Find the
allies that are mentioned in the hero's journey.
Read multiplex .com is a fantastic resource,
but also find your local peers, your friends,
your colleagues who are awake to this. Community
is the lifeboat that will get you through the
dark night of the soul. You need people who speak
this new language. We've covered the signal,
the map, the syllabus, the myth, and the grief.
It's a heavy one today, but I have to say I feel
clearer. Not less concerned, but more clear.
Clarity is the goal. We can't stop the wave,
but we can learn to surf. I want to leave the
listener with one final thought, one question
to mull over. You mentioned Ramele's endpoint,
the return with the elixir, the artisan's awakening,
this idea that we will eventually work only for
the love of it, for the craft. The ultimate destination.
So here's the question for you, listening right
now. If the return with the elixir is real, if
you woke up tomorrow and never had to earn another
paycheck again because AI and automation handled
all the survival stuff, what is the first thing
you would create? Not what would sell, not what
your boss would approve of, not what would get
likes on social media. In the quiet of your own
mind, what would you make? What would you do?
That answer, whatever it is, that might just
be your lifeboat through the storm. Thanks for
diving in with us. We'll see you in the transition.
Stay curious. And keep reading.