I spoke with my doctor today. We talked about the wave of AI displacement that is currently crashing over the economy. I told her something that made the room go quiet:
"I am the canary in the coal mine."
My industry—digital publishing—was the first to fall because we were made entirely of bits. We were the most fragile, so we detected the "gas" first. But just because you can't smell it yet doesn't mean the gas isn't rising.
The Illusion of Immunity
Most people operate under a dangerous cognitive bias: "AI isn't coming for me until it is."
They look at the hallucinations of early Chatbots and laugh. They say, "A robot can't do what I do. It lacks empathy. It lacks intuition."
This is linear thinking applied to an exponential problem. In the coal mine, the miners felt fine five minutes before they collapsed. The difference between safety and suffocation wasn't a slow decline; it was a sudden threshold.
The Lag Time of Obsolescence
The "Canary" serves a specific biological function. It has a higher metabolism than a human, so it reacts to toxins faster.
I have a high cognitive metabolism. I am an INTJ Watchman. I felt the shift in 2023. I saw the patterns. I pivoted to "Atoms" (physical goods) not because I wanted a hobby, but because I saw the oxygen levels dropping in the digital world.
Now, I look at lawyers, accountants, mid-level managers, and yes, even doctors. They are still breathing easily. They think the canary died because it was weak. They don't realize the canary died because the air is poisoned.
Good and Bad
This technological shift will not be purely evil, nor purely good. It will simply be absolute.
For those who see the canary fall and run for the exit (adapt, pivot, use the tools), it will be a time of unprecedented leverage. For those who keep digging, assuming the silence is safety, the realization will come too late.
The Protocol: Do not mock the early casualties of this revolution. They are data points. If the canary stops singing, stop digging and look for a new source of oxygen.
