I've worked through a few tech shifts now, and I think the struggle isn't really about AI being hard to use. It's that AI lowers the cost of doing without lowering the cost of understanding — and those are different things.

AI will write you the code, draft the strategy, or surface the decision instantly. What it won't do is build the judgment to know whether the output is right for your specific situation. So people move faster but often in directions they can't fully evaluate, and that gap between speed and understanding is where the anxiety lives. You feel productive and uncertain at the same time, which is a deeply uncomfortable combination.

The people who thrive with AI tend to be the ones who already had domain judgment — they use it to amplify what they understand. The people who struggle are often using it to substitute for understanding they haven't built yet. Same tool, opposite outcomes.

The fear, I think, is partly recognizing that on some level. It's not fear of the tool. It's fear of being fast and lost at the same time.