For twenty years, Microsoft Office was the universal job credential. The same inflection is happening now with AI — except the cycle that took fifteen years is compressing into eighteen months. The tools to adapt are free. The window is now.
Part of The Signal’s Vertical Wall series: the moral cost of replacing human work with machine speed.
Part of The Signal’s Vertical Wall series: what working professionals can do as AI turns careers into release-cycle risk.
Part of The Signal’s Vertical Wall series: AI as power, infrastructure, and geopolitical control.
Retracted July 14, 2026: the evidence did not support this article’s claims of recursive self-improvement or economy-wide job substitution.
AI stopped being a tool you use and became a system that uses itself. That shift has a name.