Imagine your favorite band releases a new album. Their album drops, you devour it the same day, the songs play on repeat. Within three days you know all the lyrics. You know the backstories, you get the references to older albums, you find the Easter eggs.

The next day you visit your parents. They have never heard of this band. The thing that has been on your mind 24/7 does not even generate a reaction on their end.

The same is happening in AI. Ever since OpenAI declared the race open, Francis wore the puffer jacket, and Anthropic ruined our Christmas break, we have been listening to the AI album 24/7.

For the first time in my life, I feel like I am experiencing a revolution. The kind that our kids will read of in the history books one day. This thought really hardened in the past 6 months. As an engineer, the job I did 6 months ago no longer exists today. It’s gone. We don’t write code anymore.

I understand that the implications for other disciplines might be more nuanced, that writing code happens to be the ideal fit for large language models, but from my history lessons I learned that revolutions tend to have spillover effects.

This is exciting but also a little unsettling.

When in doubt, I try to find comfort in talking to my friends. And here, I am especially curious how friends who haven’t listened to the AI album 24/7 react. So I tell them my story about the things AI has enabled me to do and I try to share my excitement. Sometimes our discussions spark curiosity on their end as well and I get to point them in a direction that might be interesting for them to explore. And then, magic happens.

My friend Jasper, formerly “only” a professional photographer, took 5 days to build himself an entirely new business with AI. One day, we talked about his website that he wanted to redo and he had some time to spare anyway. So I nudged him into trying to build one with Claude Code, instead of getting frustrated with the horrible Squarespace website builder. He not only rebuilt the website but re-invented himself in the process. He is now selling full-service photo, CI and websites in a single package. Because Claude Code now makes him a website developer.

Robin, founder of a film production company, is regularly maxing out his Claude Max plan. I visited him at his office the other day and showed him Lovable because he was looking for a way to build a small tool for a meetup he is organizing. It took him 3 days to get limited by what he was able to do in Lovable, so he moved on to Claude Code. Four weeks in, he generates interactive pitch decks for his clients, has implemented an entire ERP for their gear rental service and has a computer at home running his Claude agents while he is out directing. I am now learning from him how to run coding agents. Remember, he is a videographer. He is running remote Claude agents now.

Watching Jasper and Robin take off has done something to me. First, it’s super nice to see your friends having fun and succeeding. This alon is a win. Second, these are great examples showing how broad the application for AI is, not only in terms of the domain but also in terms of the people who can access it. Neither of them are particularly technical people.
Third, and most of all: Jasper and Robin don’t work at an AI company. They don’t listen to the AI album 24/7. They are not in the bubble. And still they find a way to make AI their own. This is what hardened my belief that the spillover effects are real.

For me, the hunch that this is big is starting to become a working theory. These experiences are testimony to that. I conclude from that that this revolution (and I feel more and more comfortable calling it that) has an effect on all of us, inside the bubble or not.
So, try to show one of your non-AI friends something they can use AI for. It takes almost nothing. A conversation. A tool name. A nudge.