The AI Revolution: Why This Time Feels Different

And why we're all less prepared than we think

Image created by the author using Dalle-E

I've lived through a few revolutions now. Not the kind with barricades and Molotov cocktails, but the quiet sort. The kind that sneaks in while your back's turned and changes everything before you've finished your cup of tea. The microwave. The mobile phone. The internet. Each time, I thought I had the measure of it. I didn't. This one feels different. Bigger. Faster. Less forgiving.

Lessons from Past Industrial Revolutions

Back in 1975, a mate of mine worked at the British Leyland car plant in Birmingham. He was on strike. Thousands were. Led by a bloke called Derek "Red Robbo" Robinson, they wanted more pay, more holidays, better conditions. While they were out on the picket lines, British Leyland's rivals in Japan and Germany were already slimming down their workforces and bringing in automation. Less than ten years later, British Leyland was finished. My mate lost his job. Never worked again. He thought the old production lines would last forever. He thought human hands couldn't be replaced. He was wrong.

Two hundred years earlier, the Industrial Revolution swept across Britain like factory smoke. Whole villages emptied. Old trades disappeared. The Luddites smashed the looms, but the looms kept coming. Before long, the old ways were gone. Life in the countryside. Skills passed down for generations. All gone. But it took time. Decades to run its course.

After the war, change came again. Washing machines, televisions, cars for everyone. My mum got her first spin dryer and thought we were living in the future. Still, you had time to catch up. Time to learn. Time to understand.

Then came computers. Email. The internet. I remember thinking it was a gimmick. That awful modem noise. Watching images load one line at a time. I didn't think it would catch on. Turns out, it did.

The Speed of AI Adoption

Here's what I've learned. Revolutions don't wait. They don't ask if you're ready. They just happen.

And the AI revolution is already here. Not next year. Not once the rules are written. Not when schools catch up. Now. You wake up one morning and find that something you've spent years learning to do: writing, coding, translating; can now be done better and faster by a machine. Not in theory. In real life. Right now.

The numbers tell the story: 78% of organisations now use AI in at least one business function, up from just 20% in 2017, according to recent McKinsey surveys. Global AI adoption is expected to surge another 20% in 2025, reaching approximately 378 million users worldwide, as reported by AltIndex.com and industry analyses. ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users by January 2023, marking the fastest adoption of any consumer internet app in history.(I used Perplexity AI to source, fact check, and cite these stats).

This one isn't just about what we do. It's about how we think. How we create. What it means to be human. And it's moving fast. ChatGPT-3 arrived in 2020. GPT-4 came three years later. In that short time, we went from party tricks to tools that can write books, diagnose illness, create artwork. We've crossed a line. I've watched people discover that work they've been doing for decades: photography, design, marketing; is now being done by algorithms. Not next month. Not someday. Today.

The Real-World Impact on Work and Creativity

AI is already reshaping how we work and create. Writers, marketers, artists, coders—more and more are turning to tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Copilot to speed things up or spark ideas. What used to take a team now takes a prompt. Even in industries that have been slow to adopt—construction, retail, healthcare—you can feel the shift coming. Jobs will go, no question. But new ones will appear just as fast. The real challenge isn’t job loss. It’s whether we’re ready to keep up.

The Environmental Cost of Progress

Environmentalists aren’t wrong. These new AI systems don’t run on fairy dust—they burn through serious amounts of electricity. Data centres already use a hefty chunk of the world’s power, and that number’s climbing fast. AI is making it worse. In the US alone, the energy feeding these server farms could power millions of homes. Meanwhile, we’re being told to switch off lights and cut back on car journeys. The irony’s hard to miss. But like it or not, the genie’s out of the bottle now.

The Spectrum of AI Reactions

The reactions are familiar, but more intense this time. Some see AI as an existential risk to humanity itself. They worry about super-intelligent systems that could escape human control, making decisions we can't understand or override. These aren't just science fiction fears any more; serious researchers debate alignment problems and the possibility that we're building something we won't be able to stop.

Writers and artists call it theft. A direct threat to human creativity and the livelihoods of millions. They point to AI models trained on their work without permission, generating art and text that competes with their own output. They're not wrong about the impact, but saying we should stop it is like saying we should have shut down the internet in 1995.

And then there are the true believers: the tech evangelists who see AI as humanity's salvation. They promise a world where AI will solve everything: no more tedious work, no more poverty, no more human cognitive limits. They envision universal basic income funded by AI productivity, diseases cured by AI researchers, and climate change solved by AI optimisation. Their optimism is infectious, but also naive.

And then there are people my age who mostly shrug it off. Another passing fad. Remember the Segway? Remember Betamax? They've heard about AI on the news, don't understand it, aren't particularly interested, and don't believe it will affect them in their lifetimes. They assume it's something for the young, something that will take decades to matter. There's real danger in that thinking, because it will affect them. It already is.

They're all missing something fundamental.

Preparing for AI-Driven Change

This isn't about good or bad. It's about inevitable. You didn't vote for the Industrial Revolution. Nobody got asked about the Digital one either. You won't get a say in this one. It's here. Whether you're ready or not. And here's the bit that stings: we were never really in control. We just liked to believe we were. The rules can change. The whole game can change. We never had a chance of winning the old one anyway.

Those of us who remember life before the internet are in a strange place now. We've seen so much change already. From landlines to smartphones. From letters to voice commands powered by Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. From paper maps to GPS navigation. We've had to reinvent ourselves more than once. And now, it looks like we'll have to do it again.

What Makes This Revolution Different

But this time, it feels deeper. This isn't just another tool. It touches something more fundamental. What happens to human expertise when Claude can analyse complex documents, ChatGPT can write code, and Copilot can assist with programming? What happens to creativity when Midjourney can generate art and RunwayML can create professional videos? What happens to connection when conversational AI can handle most customer interactions without human intervention? I don't know the answers. I don't think anyone does.

What I do know is that this revolution has already begun. It's not waiting. It's in your phone through Siri and Google Assistant. It's in your browser through ChatGPT and Claude. It's in your work tools through things like Microsoft Copilot and Slack's AI features. It's already making decisions that affect your life through the algorithms that recommend what you watch, decide your credit score, and filter job applications. Hell, it’s even driving cars. You can ignore it. You can fight it. Or you can try to understand it well enough to work with it. But sitting it out isn't really an option.

The Path Forward

Like all revolutions, this one will lift some people up and leave others behind. It will fix some problems and create new ones. It will give us new powers while making old ones useless. The question isn't if it's coming. The question is whether we shape it, or let it shape us.

Maybe you've already felt the shift. That moment when something changed, and you realised you'd missed it. Perhaps you've tried ChatGPT for the first time, or watched someone generate a professional-looking image with Midjourney in seconds.

Or perhaps you're still watching it all speed past, trying to make sense of it. I understand that feeling. I've been there with every revolution I've lived through. The temptation is to wait until the dust settles, until someone explains it all properly, until the rules are clear. But here's what I've learned: the dust never really settles. The rules keep changing. And waiting just means you'll be further behind when you finally decide to catch up.

So what do you do? Start small. Try the tools: ChatGPT for writing help, Claude for analysis, Midjourney for images. Ask questions. Pay attention to what's changing in your own work, your own life. Don't try to become an expert overnight; that's not the point. The point is to stay interested, to keep learning, to stay curious about what's possible.

Because this time, the revolution isn't just changing how we work or communicate. It's changing what it means to be human in a world where machines can think. And that conversation; the one about who we are and who we want to be. That's one we all need to be part of.

The revolution is already here. The question isn't whether we can stop it. The question is whether we'll help write the next chapter.