Exactly how big a deal it will be and what the deal actually looks like are still unknown. Position oneself accordingly.
While we disagree on the upper bound of capabilities, we all agree that AI will be a “big deal”. (Formalizing this is somewhat challenging, but we will try now.) The world will change as a result of this technology, and things that seemed like science fiction will soon be possible — just like the world of today is different to the world thirty years ago. Indeed, in many ways, the technology we have today exceeds the capabilities of the science fiction of the time.