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The End of Thinking - Derek Thompson

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This is an expanded and revised version of an essay that originally ran in The Argument, an online magazine where I am a contributing writer. Subscribe to The Argument In the last few months, top AI executives and thinkers have offered an eerily specific and troubling prediction about how long it will be before artificial intelligence takes over the economy. The message is: “YOU HAVE 18 MONTHS.” By the summer of 2027, they say, AI’s explosion in capabilities will leave carbon-based life forms in the dust. Up to “half of all entry-level white-collar jobs” will be wiped out, and even Nobel Prize-worthy minds will cower in fear once AI’s architects have built a “country of geniuses in a datacenter.” I do not like this prediction, for several reasons. First, it’s no fun to imagine my imminent worthlessness. Second, it’s hard for me to take seriously economic predictions that resemble a kind of secular Rapture, in which a god-like entity descends upon the earth and makes whole categories of

The End of Thinking The rise of AI's "thinking" machines is not the problem. The decline of thinking people is. Derek Thompson Sep 24, 2025 1,705 122 415 Share This is an expanded and revised version of an essay that originally ran in The Argument, an online magazine where I am a contributing writer. Subscribe to The Argument Photo by Sanika V on Unsplash In the last few months, top AI executives and thinkers have offered an eerily specific and troubling prediction about how long it will be before artificial intelligence takes over the economy. The message is: “YOU HAVE 18 MONTHS.” By the summ

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