Nine months ago, Sam Brown was out of a job. The reason, he’ll tell you without a sense of bitterness, was artificial intelligence. The company he’d spent years building a career inside decided it needed fewer people, and he was one of them.
“I got laid off nine months ago, and it was AI-related,” said Brown, 48, with a career that stretches back to 2000, aside from a few months as a ball boy for the Denver Nuggets in his youth. “I had to sit there and say, ‘This is a blessing, because I get a head start on everyone else that’s going to have to go through this in a little while.'”