I had a chance this week to see the future of artificial intelligence. The advances so far with chatbots and other major shifts have brought the world into a place that did not exist previously. These changes are magical in some ways, compared to where we were in 2020. We're about to take another leap, however.

Up until now, artificial intelligence was confined, for the most part, to a small text window that you typed into. Maybe you were a more tech-savvy person and talked audibly to the chatbot. Some more advanced users may have connected directly to the bots and run commands. 

But the most challenging part of all this was getting the AI to do something. It could recommend actions, write things up, and more. But it is difficult for the AI to actually do something for the end user, where you get something after a set of instructions. That is the evolution as we kick off 2026, and it raises many questions that should leave most people shaky. 

I had a chance to test one of the new open-source personal assistant software products that have come out in recent months. After some technical setup steps, I was up and running with an AI agent that was not just willing to talk and explain things, but was able to access various tools and start doing. 

The basics with all these kinds of programs are calendar organizing and more. But I saw some other guys get their AI bot make reservations - not through just creating an app selection - but by calling the restaurant, holding a conversation, and reserving that way.

The agent is fully capable of designing a program for you as well. It aims to please and will do everything in its power to take the next step, including walking you through the tools necessary to build something.

The first profession targeted with this is personal assistants and secretaries. But it goes beyond that, too. You can go to the extreme with this and start having it build software systems for you on the fly. This is the vibe coding phenomenon brought to the average person. 

But it also dramatically changes the dynamics of what is needed. Those visionary founders no longer need the massive coding teams. They just need an idea. The superhero comic book world where Tony Stark has Jarvis is going to get closer to home. 

There's obviously one missing point there: the average person can't use this to make something physical, yet. But that's not the point. The technology is arriving now that makes Siri or Alexa an actual functioning thing. These things have been mostly useless. But if you can have them take reasoned, hard actions, that's a different story. 

What's been disappointing so far about the AI era is that people have mostly leaned into them for chatbot purposes. It's someone to talk to about things instead of being seen as a helpful tool.

There are limitations to that. Sure, it can solve trivia questions, explain a concept, or help you with medical stuff. But at its core, it's just a far more efficient Google. This fact partially explains why people aren't using it for more.

An AI that can actually take independent actions can replace employees. Why bother to hire another knowledge worker when one AI can do the trick for you? 

That's the question many companies, particularly those with substantial cash reserves, are going to start asking more and more. There are already signs that AI-optimized processes are taking hold nationwide, with monthly job numbers cooling off considerably. 

Why hire someone to do something when an autonomous robot can do it far cheaper and can work 24/7/365? It's a sci-fi question, but it's also the one our world is facing now.

This isn't like previous revolutions, like the industrial and computer age revolutions. In those, work was radically altered, but there was still substantial human input. That's not true anymore. Now, the revolution looks at the humans who created it and no longer needs them.

Now, I don't think this is all doom and gloom. I do believe we'll see new jobs pop up in this new world. Those jobs and careers will be different than everything that came previously. 

But we are in a transition period right now. And the first part of the transition is clear: humans aren't needed for a lot of jobs. The replacement jobs and careers haven't arrived yet. What now? 

The technology and the tools around it are advancing far faster than anyone could have imagined. All the talk of AGI and the rest is secondary to the fact that human jobs are getting replaced by virtual machines. Companies don't even have to build a factory for this. 

The future is here, right now. We are not prepared.