Oops, I missed it again
Being immersed in AI still hasn’t made its turning points any easier to predict
Last week, Anthropic gave me an exclusive opportunity to speak with Logan Graham, the leader of the company’s Frontier Red Team —a group of researchers tasked with stress-testing Anthropic’s most advanced AI systems and exploring how they could be misused—about a new product the company was about to launch based on the team’s findings, called Claude Code Security.
I’d met Graham and his colleagues months earlier at Black Hat and DEF CON—an annual one-two punch of conferences focused on cybersecurity and hacking—where Anthropic had been sharing security research on the capabilities of its AI model, Claude. By the time that work turned into a product, it felt like a natural progression, one I already understood. It made sense that I’d be the one to write about it.
In my story, I focused on what Claude Code Security actually does: an AI system designed to hunt software bugs on its own, including the most dangerous ones humans often miss. What I didn’t anticipate was that the real headline would come after the announcement. Investors were spooked by what the tool seemed to imply—that traditional security software might be less necessary—and cybersecurity stocks sank, including incumbents like CrowdStrike and Zscaler.
I don’t think the investor panic was warranted. But the episode was another reminder that covering AI as a daily beat is strange. It’s a constant rush of product launches, hot takes, marathon podcasts, influencer threads, and deeply technical arguments about what matters and what doesn’t. And no matter how closely I follow the research—or how many people I talk to—the list of things I don’t see coming keeps getting longer.
I’ve written about this feeling before: the day ChatGPT landed in my inbox and felt, at first, unremarkable; the moment Matt Shumer reached out ahead of publishing his viral essay, “Something Big Is Happening”; the shock of reading that Sam Altman had been fired from OpenAI just after I’d written about the company’s nonprofit board. Each time, I thought I understood the story—until it suddenly became something else.
I know I’m not alone in this—if you’re constantly reading about AI or working in the industry, I’m sure it happens to you, too. And I’m not claiming to be any kind of fortune teller when it comes to AI (even though I work at Fortune, ha). But as an AI reporter constantly trying to break news, analyze trends, and dig deep, it’s disconcerting to realize how often the story you think you’re covering isn’t the one that ends up taking off. 🤷♀️
I appreciate your coverage and insights. I appreciate someone like you who has great access, intelligence, and insights during this crazy time. Doubt many people on Nov 29, 2022 predicted the ChatGPT launch the next day (although you covered it quickly, if memory serves?). When kids were trick-or-treating in October of 2025, not many people predicted the fastest-growing GitHub project of all time was about to launch.
Was thinking about people asked to predict the future. Forget most stock pickers losing to SP 500.
In the NFL draft, approximately 40 percent of first round picks aren’t starting in their 2nd year, and 50% or more of first-round NFL draft picks are no longer with the team in 5 years. The amount of time and expertise in picking these kids is HUGE, but not good at predicting the future.
Science says C-levels are bad at predicting the future too. Forget Elon Musks track record of predictions (16% of his predictions come true on time). A 2020 London School of Business found that when US public company CEOs who knew quarterly financial reports were asked to predict realized returns after the information was public, they were directionally wrong in one-third of cases (and 100% got the scale wrong).
In a world swimming with gigantic claims, even bigger surprises, and frequent and unexpected news bombs, I am very glad you are doing what you are doing.
It happens! And it hurts! Once I spent a year running down a big interview. Finally got it. And the person in question got canned the day the story came out. John Lennon Borrowing: News is what happens when your busy making other plans.