Did we experience the same thing? March 2020 saw explosion in nyc and much of mainland US and widespread lockdowns. However many people were convinced the lockdowns would last two weeks at most with covid dropping to near zero (in hindsight completely ridiculous low probability thinking)
Yeah, that isn't generative AI today, the explosion already happened. At best you can call the explosion ChatGPT, but that was already 1.5 years ago.
Not much unexpected will happen now unless a new breakthrough is made. Similarly covid in march 2021 were well understood and not much would happen unless it mutated into a much deadlier strain, which of course is unlikely to happen. Covid in march 2021 was still a massive thing, as is AI today, but just that it is a massive well understood thing not something that will completely change the world in the future.
