Something that strikes me as really weird about the AI age that we're in is we all know we've entered it, but no one was aware when we entered it.
It was like a time jump.
Two years ago we were mocking AI videos for their crappiness, speculating that AI may or may not be all they're saying it's cracked up to be.
And now, we're in solid "AI is terrifying and I can't imagine the dystopia someone born today is going to grow up in regarding the all encompassing nature of AI"
And it's like having a black out when drunk. One minute you're in a bar. The next minute you're behind bars for public intoxication and you didn't remember anything in between.
That's how it feels with the AI thing.
Of course we always had trepidations from early on, but unlike certain ages, the age of woke, the age of covidians, the age of seeing the extent of the brainwashing, there were solid markers of "we were there, and now we're here and here's what led to that."
But with AI, I don't know if it's similar to you, but it was like a realtime mandella effect where suddenly we're in the AI age and it felt just like yesterday we were mocking the "Will Smith eats spaghetti" and there doesn't seem to be a clear moment where everyone took AI for the serious existential threat that it is....it just happened, like a black out from drinking. It's a very strange feeling.
I knew something big happened as soon Dall-E come out. I'm not saying I didn't laugh at the funny pictures and ridiculous fails too, but I knew it would be a big deal. Maybe it's because I understand the limits of conventional software a little better than the average person. They taught a computer to do something that seemed impossible. Whether it was useful or not, I could tell it wasn't just a gimmick, it was a breakthrough.
So I guess that's where I'd put the start of the AI age. To be clear I'm not claiming I knew where we'd be in 5 years (or else I'd have brought a whole lot of Nvidia stock...) but I couldn't say anything that happened since then came as a surprise exactly either.