An interesting aspect that doesn't seem captured by TFA and similar articles is that it is not a specific kind of business that is being disrupted, but rather an entire genre of labor on which they all rely to varying extents: knowledge work. Furthermore, "knowledge work" is a very broad term that encompasses an extremely broad variety of skillsets (engineering, HR, sales, legal, medical...) And knowledge workers are indeed being rapidly disrupted by GenAI.
This is an interesting phenomenon that probably has no historical equivalent and hence may not have been fully contemplated in any literature, and so comparisons like TFA fall short of capturing the full implications.
Whether these companies see themselves an AI company seems orthogonal to the fact that they should acknowledge this sea-change and adapt. However, currently all industries seem to be thinking they should be an "AI company" and are responding by trying to stuff AI into any product they can. Maybe the urgency for them to adapt should be based on the degree to which knowledge work is critical to their business.
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