In the 1980's, managers at major corporations doubted (and sometimes actively fought) the use of personal computers by their professional employees. There was sunk cost in mainframes, terminals and business software--and PC's were thought to be just a sideshow. Even older UNIX engineers fought the use of PC's.

For a lot of the engineering profession, engineering design work was still being done on paper--CAD was not yet readily available--and everyone was familiar with those processes that had existed for decades. CAD was expensive and it didn't fit the workflow.

In the early 90's, things really started to change rapidly. Engineers had to completely change the way they worked. Those who didn't or couldn't moved to other jobs.

But even in 1995, a mix of economic, social and technology experts were doubtful that the Internet would ever have an impact on our economy or the way we live.

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2016/08/25-years-h...

The stock markets didn't ignore the changes. The late 90's was a great time to be in the market.

But in 1999, the stock market bubble burst (the Dot-Com crash). The profit projections were just too optimistic. For those who got out, it was party time.

Despite the crash, it turned out that the technology (computers, networks , software, and then phones) was real and incredibly disruptive--just not as profitable as the market was predicting.

Nevertheless, companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon (and others) grew to become the backbone of our economy. The capability that grew out of that era killed a lot of jobs (e.g. mall jobs), but opened up entirely new economic opportunities, e.g. social media and software cybersecurity.

AI is just the next disruptive phase of this technology timeline. Jobs that were common 20 years ago will become less common, and professionals will need to learn to find new ways to work, make money and build careers--probably using some form of AI.

Yes, AI will be transformative and there is no reason to think it won't be if you pay attention to the history of the past 3 or 4 decades. Will the stock market bubble burst? Maybe...I am certainly paying attention.