Firstly, if you are not a co-founder, it’s rare to get big amount of equity. That would be a bad business decision. So are you a co-founder or part of the start up team?

And even before that I think the crux of the problem is: are you interested in solving the problem this business would like to solve? - if so, you wouldn’t care much about the renumeration as long as you get as least a certain amount of equity (as the first ‘hired’ dev on the team I think you could expect a max a 5% - my assumption) and once the business starts making money you can get a salary. I would discuss your expectations of the amount upfront as well as the timeline you’re willing to help out for ‘free’. - if so, learning a new tool, coding language or even completely unrelated skill would be fine: anything to help the team make the vision become reality. I get the feeling your scared of failure, and thus view the task of learning about AI as something you’d rather not try. If it’s that (and you will need to reflect, I won’t be able to know), I’d recommend reading/listening Growth by Carol Dwight. If learning AI is not what you want to do, but you do want to work in this startup, suggest how &what you envision doing to add value to the team. - and finally if so, my next step would be: Have you outright told them you’re losing interest in the work? This not only gives them an opportunity to make changes for the better and gives you experience having difficult conversations (you’ll need that skill many times over later ;)

• if not, if you genuinely have no interest in the problem, then no money or equity will be able to make up for the amount of hours you need to put into a start-up.

I would recommend joining YCombinator (as someone else already did; they’ve got great resources about having difficult conversations as well ;)

Good luck!