By Patrick Barry
Publication Date: 2026-01-23 13:44:00
Journalist Ira Glass, who hosts the NPR show “This American Life,” is not a computer scientist. He doesn’t work at Google, Apple or Nvidia. But he has a good ear for useful phrases, and in 2024 he has organized an entire episode around one that might resonate with anyone feeling blindsided by the speed of AI development: “Unprepared for what has already happened.”
The phrase, coined by science journalist Alex Steffen, expresses the troubling feeling that “the experience and expertise you built up” may now be outdated – or at least much less valuable than it once was.
Whenever I lead workshops at law firms, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations, I hear the same concerns. Highly educated, savvy professionals worry about whether there is a place for them in an economy where generative AI can quickly – and relatively cheaply – handle a growing list of tasks that extremely large numbers of people are currently paid to do.
