Vertigo.
That is how I would describe the first days after being infected by the virus. I watch the world come apart in front of me, live. It reminds me of the time I started to see the world through the grid of a spreadsheet. Well, yes: it is happening to us. The AI virus has infected some of us and we are transforming from the inside. And it comes with a fever, red eyes and a madman’s face that scares people.
No, we are not high on anything: it is the mind reconfiguring the world, and this is only what it looks like from the outside. I think that in a few weeks, or a few months, we will look normal again. I cannot confirm it: I am still in the process.
Once you discover the power of automation in a real AI agent (I use opencode), things can never go back to the way they were.
Here is an example. I gave it access to our CRM’s API and asked it to take every company in the EU, look up its intra-community VAT number, verify it against the official European Union website and flag them as VAT-exempt. A job of weeks. It took 48 seconds. And the worst part is not that. The worst part is that it was the first silly thing that came to mind. I threw it out without thinking, convinced it would come back with some nonsense. When it did it, my first thought was panic: “what if it has broken something?”. When the fear passed, I saw what was really in there: it was not magic, it was time. I have been sleeping five hours for three weeks.
I will tell you a secret: I should not be talking about this, because not everyone is ready.
In The Matrix, Cypher eats a steak he knows does not exist. He knows it is the program lying to his brain: juicy, delicious. And he chooses it anyway. “Ignorance is bliss,” he says, as he negotiates a return to the prison he was once woken from. He would rather go back to sleep than keep looking at the desert of the real.
If you are one of the red-pill people, like me, you will get there too. Someone has to teach you (I call it initiating), but once you get it… you will not let go.
Yes, the world is changing, and so are we. I am not afraid of change: I am afraid of missing it. Whoever does not look now will not be out of a job tomorrow; they will be the one who does not understand what everyone was talking about. And that is what really gives you vertigo.
A version of this text also lives on my personal blog: sancholerena.com.