I attended a meeting this week where one of the participants was wearing a pendent about the size of a pen cap around his neck. It was plain gray and he wore it around his neck like a piece of jewelry. I asked about it and he said it was a Plaud NotePin.

It is one of the first AI-enabled devices designed to help keep us organized during meetings. Here’s how it works: With the push of a button, the Plaud device records meetings, transcribes notes and uses AI to organize the meeting content into to-do lists, sets dates and deadlines and organizes the notes into actionable items.

I had heard of devices like this, but never experienced one in a meeting. It is an example of how AI is beginning to change our lives and how we work. And from the research I’ve done on the subject, this is the tip of the iceberg. A year from now, we will probably read this column and laugh.

When we ask AI to create a funny photo of our friends or feed it a prompt, what we are experiencing is a tiny fraction of what AI will be capable of in the very near future. If you are not paying attention to the development of AI (though you should), you are missing a profoundly important story that will literally shape our future.

Researchers and technology experts now believe that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will be reached, possibly as soon as this year, but almost certainly by 2027. Why is AGI important? Because that is the point where AI will be able to do nearly all the cognitive tasks that a human can do. In short, it will be a computer that can reason and learn. This will change our lives in ways we can’t begin to imagine.

It is also an economic race. Kevin Roose, the technology columnist for the New York Times said in a recent article: “I believe that over the next decade, powerful AI will generate trillions of dollars in economic value and tilt the balance of political and military power toward the nations that control it — and that most governments and big corporations already view this as obvious, as evidenced by the huge sums of money they’re spending to get there first.”

He goes on to say: “I arrived at (my conclusion that we need to prepare for AI now) as a journalist who has spent a lot of time talking to the engineers building powerful A.I. systems, the investors funding it and the researchers studying its effects. And I’ve come to believe that what’s happening in A.I. right now is bigger than most people understand.”

AI is going to be so much bigger than whether it can write a column like this (it can, but there’s something to be said for human creativity) or whether it can sort and make sense of meeting notes like my Plaud example above or if it can design buildings and office space.

There really is no way to prepare for what’s coming. There’s no way to protect our industry or businesses from it. There’s no way to prepare society for the changes we will see. We can only hope our political leaders take this seriously and create some guardrails for AI implementation.

You can educate yourself to these changes, but you need to keep your eyes open for unbiased reporting on the subject since the companies pursuing AI are telling a story with a definite slant. I would suggest reading everything you can about AI development.

And buckle up for the ride.