You’re Going to Get Steamrolled

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You’re Going to Get Steamrolled

And you won’t even see it coming.

I was sitting in the office earlier this week and one of my coworkers — 29 years old, the kind of guy who considers himself smart — is thinking out loud about a difficult call he has to make to a client.

“How could I phrase this?” he says. Half to himself, half to the room.

I start turning it over in my head. I’m working something out. And then I say — “Hey, why don’t you ask AI, because—”

I didn’t get to finish.

I couldn’t even see him. Just his voice coming over the cubicle wall.

“No. I’m not going to use AI. I have a brain. I can think.”

He said it the way people say things when they want you to know they’re done listening. Dismissive. A little contemptuous. Like I had just suggested he cheat on a test.

I didn’t respond.

I just went back to work.

But I kept thinking about it. Hours later I was still thinking about it. Not because I was angry — though I was, a little — but because of what that moment actually revealed. That one sentence. That one reflex.

I have a brain. I can think.

As if using every tool available to you is a sign of weakness. As if asking for help — from a person, from a book, from technology — means you’re less than. As if intelligence is proved by doing everything alone and the hard way.

That’s not intelligence. I don’t know what it is. But it’s not that.

I use AI every single day. I’ve gotten angles from it I never would have found alone. It moves something loose in my head. That’s what a tool does. And this 29-year-old is sitting across from me proud of himself for refusing to pick it up.

I’m older. I’ve watched technology rewrite the rules of working more than once. I’ve seen the people who adapted and the people who dug in and refused. I’ve seen how that story ends.

But this one is different. This one is faster and bigger and less forgiving than anything that came before it.

AI is not coming. It’s already here. It’s already changing what jobs exist, what skills matter, what gets you in the door and what gets you left behind. It’s a tsunami that’s coming and you better be heading for high ground. Every single day it gets closer and larger. Run.

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You’re 29. You have what feels like all the time in the world. You’re smart — or at least you tell yourself that — and that confidence feels like protection.

It isn’t.

The people who are going to get steamrolled are not the ones who weren’t capable. They’re the ones who were too proud to pick up the tool. At any age.

I think about the millions of people who are going to wake up in ten years and find the door closed. Not because they weren’t good enough. Because they decided too early that they already knew enough.

That one moment in a small blue collar office. That one reflex.

I have a brain. I can think.

Yeah. So does everyone who’s about to pass you.

— Neon

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