I’m afraid!

I wouldn't say so. Most AI tools I come across are moderately good at doing an MVP of something. I wouldn't trust any with actually replacing someone yet for quality reasons, and it doesn't feel like it's becoming sentient just yet, but that's just my thoughts on it. I feel that AI has been slightly overhyped, and it's not as far as people might think.

This is a contentious question and it's so easy to be afraid. I suppose my first question is what exactly you might be afraid of. Because there are so many different things that could be scary. The technology is moving very fast at the moment and all change is scary. Especially if you don't understand the technology. Are you worried that AI will become sentient and take over the world? Because in my professional opinion, we are still pretty far from that. The models that we like to call AI are not intelligent by a long shot. At least no more so than your average excel sheet. They are functions that take an input and return an output based on statistic collected from tons of similar input that the model was trained on. And that is it. They are getting really good at sounding like there is thought behind the answer because we are literally training them to respond like we would, but there is no independent thought. At least not in my opinion. I guess we need to define what independent thought to be strict about that. I know you said, not in terms of jobs only, but just to address that: Maybe. If you happen to be very talented at a skill that AI makes available to everyone and selling your services is how you make a living, then yes. In the 50's "computer" was a job title. That particular job doesn't exist anymore because the electronic version made them obsolete. This is a really hard problem and I, personally, think that it is a shared responsibility for us as a society to make sure that people don't end up forgotten and left behind. Preferably in a way where the technology empowers them and lets them grow rather than replaces them. This can definitely play out in a bad way, though, but it is no different from when, say, a phone operators eventually were replaced by electronics. And it's certainly not a a reason to keep human phone operators around. In conclusion... AI is a buzz word. It's just advances in technology like everything else. I think we have a personal responsibility to stay flexible and grow. And I think we as a society have a responsibility to help those who cannot do that. But we can't stop improving because of it.