The AGI Disruption Timeline
A living record of key AI breakthroughs, deployments, and their documented impact on human employment from 2022 to present.
WEF: 85M jobs displaced, 97M new roles created by 2025
World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report confirms that while AI displaces clerical and manual roles, new AI-adjacent jobs are emerging. Net employment impact depends heavily on retraining programs.
Claude Sonnet 4 — AI agents complete complex multi-step work autonomously
Next-generation AI agents can now complete multi-day research projects, write and deploy code, manage projects, and coordinate complex workflows — pushing the automation frontier into knowledge work.
Devin — the first 'AI software engineer' completes real tasks autonomously
Cognition AI releases Devin, an autonomous AI agent that can complete end-to-end software engineering tasks including debugging, deployment, and documentation. The software developer role faces new pressure.
OpenAI Sora — AI generates professional-grade video
OpenAI releases Sora, generating up to 1-minute photorealistic videos from text. Film production, advertising, and media industries face immediate disruption.
EU AI Act becomes law — world's first comprehensive AI regulation
The European Union's AI Act is formally adopted, creating risk-based regulations for AI systems. High-risk AI in healthcare, law enforcement, and employment faces strict requirements.
Claude 3 Opus outperforms GPT-4 on most benchmarks
Anthropic's Claude 3 family demonstrates that frontier AI capability is accelerating rapidly. Multiple models now exceed human expert performance on professional knowledge tests.
GPT-4o — real-time voice and vision AI goes live
OpenAI releases GPT-4o with real-time voice conversation and vision capabilities. Customer service, sales calls, and voice-based roles face immediate disruption.
OpenAI o1 — AI achieves PhD-level reasoning in science
OpenAI's o1 model performs at the 89th percentile on competitive programming, scores 83% on AIME math tests, and reaches PhD-level reasoning in physics, chemistry, and biology.
GPT-4 surpasses human performance on professional exams
OpenAI's GPT-4 scores in the top 10% on the Bar Exam, top 13% on the SAT, and passes the USMLE medical exam. The first model demonstrably capable across professional-level knowledge tasks.
Goldman Sachs: AI could replace 300M full-time jobs
Goldman Sachs publishes landmark report estimating AI could automate 25-50% of current work tasks in advanced economies, equivalent to 300 million full-time jobs globally.
Hollywood writers strike — AI replaces listed as central demand
WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike over AI rights, becoming the first major labor action explicitly targeting AI replacement. Establishes a precedent for AI workplace negotiations.
Claude 2 — 100K context window enables document-level AI work
Anthropic releases Claude 2 with 100,000 token context window, enabling AI to process entire books, codebases, and legal documents in a single pass. Legal and financial research automation accelerates.
Google Gemini — multimodal AI enters the enterprise
Google releases Gemini, its most capable multimodal AI model, deeply integrated into Workspace products. Millions of enterprise workers gain AI writing, analysis, and coding tools overnight.
ChatGPT launches — 100M users in 60 days
OpenAI releases ChatGPT, triggering the fastest consumer adoption of any technology in history. Millions of knowledge workers immediately begin using AI for writing, coding, analysis, and research.
GitHub Copilot exits beta — AI pair programming goes mainstream
GitHub Copilot launches publicly, completing 40% of developer code on average. The first major AI tool to demonstrably augment and partially replace human labor in a high-skill profession.
Methodology note: Events are selected for their documented or projected impact on employment. Job displacement figures are estimates from referenced research reports and may include both direct displacement and significant task-level automation across affected workforces.