You know that scene in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum looks at the dinosaurs and drops: "You were so preoccupied with whether you could, you didn't stop to think if you should"?
Yeah. That was America this past week.
The scare that's no longer just a scare
Fortune nailed the headline: "The week AI fear got real and America realized it might not be ready for what's coming." And look, I hate agreeing with mainstream outlets — they're usually three months behind or selling their sponsors' narrative — but this time they got the diagnosis right.
What happened? A convergence of factors that made even the most optimistic guy in Silicon Valley swap his corporate smile for a funeral face:
- Mass layoffs in sectors that swore AI would only be "complementary" to human work.
- Leaked internal reports showing that tech companies don't even fully understand what their own AIs are doing in certain decision-making layers.
- Regulators in Washington chasing their own tails, trying to understand technology that evolves faster than they can schedule a committee meeting.
And the market? The market did what it always does: swung between euphoria and panic like a bipolar patient off their meds.
Skin in the game: who's actually exposed?
Here's where the question Taleb would ask if he were in this conversation comes in: who's got skin in the game?
The Big Tech CEOs ramming AI down the market's throat? These guys have golden parachutes, bulletproof stock options, and an army of lawyers. If the whole thing blows up, they slip out the back door with a few billion in their pockets and an "apology post" on LinkedIn.
The one who gets punched in the face is the average American worker. The customer service rep. The woman doing data analysis in spreadsheets. The young college grad who spent 200 grand on a degree thinking a diploma was armor against obsolescence.
It's not.
And here in Brazil, my friend? Don't kid yourself thinking we're sitting in some protected bubble. When the wave hits the US, the tsunami reaches us — just with worse infrastructure, a more outdated education system, and an even slower government.
The circus rolls on
What fills me with righteous rage — and here's where my side that can't keep quiet kicks in — is the forced optimism circus that persists.
Open LinkedIn. Count how many posts you find saying: "AI won't replace you. It'll replace the people who don't know how to use AI." That pretty little phrase became a stage guru's mantra. It's the 2025 version of "hustle while they sleep."
Bullshit. Reality is way more brutal than that.
AI will replace a massive number of people. Period. That's not pessimism — it's arithmetic. When a technology does in 3 seconds what a human does in 3 hours, the market doesn't hesitate. The market has no feelings. The market has a cost spreadsheet.
Warren Buffett once said it's only when the tide goes out that you discover who's been swimming naked. The AI tide is rising so fast that a lot of people haven't even noticed they're already standing there with no clothes on.
So what do you do with this?
I'm not a guru. I'm not going to sell you a course on "how to prepare for the AI revolution in 7 steps." But I'll tell you what I think as someone who puts real money on the line every single day:
1. Diversify your skills the way you diversify your investments. If you depend on a single competency, you're a concentrated portfolio. And concentrated portfolios blow up.
2. Be skeptical of people with nothing to lose telling you what to do. Analysts who've never traded. Consultants who've never built a business. Politicians who've never signed the front of a check.
3. Pay attention to the real flow of capital. Where is the big money going? AI infrastructure, chips, energy, data centers. It's not in the hype around the app of the moment — it's in the picks and shovels of the digital gold rush.
America woke up scared this week. The question that remains is: what about you? Are you going to wait for the scare to hit your own backyard, or are you already moving your pieces on the board?
Because the board, my friend, changed a long time ago. It's just that nobody sent the memo.
