A 5,000-word essay titled "Something Big Is Happening" has been making the rounds since yesterday, and it's rattled a lot of people. Matt Shumer, the CEO of HyperWrite (an AI writing company), makes a bold claim: AI disruption is going to be "much, much bigger than COVID," and most people aren't paying attention.
The essay went viral fast. Fortune, Business Insider, Inc, and Mashable all picked it up within hours. If you run a small business, you've probably already had someone forward it to you with a "have you seen this??" attached.
So let's talk about what's actually in it, what's credible, and what you should do about it.
What Shumer Is Actually Saying
The core argument is straightforward: after the release of GPT-5.3 Codex and Claude Opus 4.6 on February 5th, Shumer says AI can now do all of his technical work. Not "most of it" or "a rough draft." The finished product.
He describes telling an AI what to build, walking away for four hours, and coming back to find the work done — tested, refined, and ready for review. He compares the current moment to February 2020, when COVID was spreading overseas but most people hadn't yet registered what was coming.
His timeline for when this hits other industries — law, finance, medicine, consulting, design — is one to five years. Maybe less.
Where He's Right
Shumer isn't wrong about the pace of improvement. If you tried ChatGPT in 2023 and walked away unimpressed, the gap between then and now is enormous. The models released in early 2026 represent a genuine leap, particularly for coding and technical work.
He's also right that tech workers are feeling this first. Software engineers, content writers, and data analysts have been adapting to AI-augmented workflows for over a year now. A Harvard Business Review study from late last year confirmed what many already suspected: AI is changing the nature of knowledge work, not just automating low-skill tasks.
And the COVID comparison, while dramatic, isn't entirely off base. The pattern of "experts see it coming while the mainstream dismisses it" is real. We've seen that dynamic play out repeatedly with technology shifts.
Where Small Businesses Should Pump the Brakes
Here's what the essay glosses over: context matters. Shumer runs an AI company. His work is building software products. AI being great at writing code is a direct, immediate impact on his specific job.
If you're a plumber, a restaurant owner, or a landscaping company, the idea that AI is about to replace you in "one to five years" is not supported by what we're seeing today. Physical work, local relationships, and hands-on expertise aren't going anywhere.
That said, the business operations side of every company is fair game. Scheduling, invoicing, customer communications, marketing, bookkeeping — these are areas where AI tools are already saving small businesses real time and money. The adoption roadmap isn't about replacing your team. It's about freeing them up to do higher-value work.
The Real Risk for Small Businesses
The risk isn't that AI replaces your business overnight. It's that your competitors start using AI and you don't.
Think about it practically:
- A competitor responds to leads in 2 minutes instead of your 2 hours because they set up an AI-powered intake system
- A rival firm produces weekly blog content that drives organic traffic while you're still thinking about your first post
- Another shop automates their bookkeeping and reinvests those 10 hours per week into customer acquisition
The businesses that thrive through this shift won't be the ones with the fanciest AI tools. They'll be the ones that identified their biggest time sinks and applied AI to the right problems first.
What to Do This Week (Not This Year)
Skip the panic. Skip the "AI is going to take all jobs" doom spiral. Instead, take one concrete step:
1. Pick your biggest time sink. What task eats your hours but doesn't directly generate revenue? Email management? Quote generation? Social media? Expense tracking?
2. Try one AI tool for that specific task. Not a general chatbot — a tool built for that workflow. There are AI-powered solutions for nearly every back-office function now, and many have free tiers.
3. Give it two weeks. Track the time saved. If it works, expand. If it doesn't, try a different tool or a different task.
That's it. You don't need a "digital transformation strategy." You need to start somewhere and build from there.
The Bottom Line
Shumer's essay is worth reading. He's an insider describing real changes in how knowledge work gets done, and his firsthand account of AI capability improvements is credible. But the "bigger than COVID" framing is designed to get attention — and it worked.
For small businesses, the right response isn't fear. It's curiosity paired with action. The technology is moving fast, and the gap between businesses that adopt AI tools and those that don't will keep widening. But "adopt AI" doesn't mean "replace your staff with robots." It means finding the spots where automation creates breathing room, then using that room to do more of what makes your business valuable in the first place.
Want help figuring out where AI fits in your business? Get in touch — we help small businesses cut through the noise and find practical AI solutions that actually move the needle.