You are less behind on AI than you think

How do you feel looking at this billboard? If you are like me, and many people, you might feel a sinking feeling in your stomach, and you may already be breathing deeply through your nose to try to calm down your nervous system. Let’s stop that right now: this message is demonstrably false, and I actually think it is irresponsible and maybe even cruel to share. I’m sorry! I generated the image of this billboard to identify and call it out as a broader phenomenon. This type of messaging is designed to make you feel terrible about yourself at a time that most people are already pretty stressed out about AI. The billboard shows the most extreme version of an unhelpful, clearly false belief, which, nonetheless, it is exceedingly easy to experience today. While this billboard is not real, it has functional equivalents in real billboards, endless Twitter posts, obnoxious and performative bragging at work and at networking events, so many YouTube tutorials and newsletters, and yes, way too many LinkedIn posts. I would love if we could short-circuit the omnipresent AI status game, where everyone is trying to convince everyone else that they’re AI expert users getting up at 5 am to jerry-rig their hybrid OpenClaw set-up while meditating and squeezing their own carrot-turmeric juice. These status games are clearly rooted in anxiety and insecurity, and I think the only way to begin to neutralise them is to point them out, note how transparent they are, and call out how shitty it is to propagate this sort of AI shame and anxiety bait. In the worst instances and for the worst offenders, this content is actively designed to hijack your nervous system and activate fear in the most ancient parts of our brains, so that various grifters can have their sloppy posts go viral (and perhaps even convince you to part with your hard-earned money to buy whatever AI gimmick they’re selling). A list of “master prompts” for $29.99. Another $299 course that will make you an AI jedi master over a weekend. For many others, it’s probably just the latest version of the standard LinkedIn “proud to announce” performative self-positioning. So… could we please all agree to stop that? Could we call out the peacocking AI slop? What if we focused not on impressing and intimidating other people with elaborate tool stacks, but on sharing our own learnings honestly and with some humility? What can I say, I’m an idealist 😉 Because the deeper issue is that feeling overwhelmed by AI, worried about being “found out” for not having tried Claude yet, or not knowing what GPT stands for, is not at all helpful to actual learning progress. Fear is antithetical to curiosity, learning, and taking risk. When people feel behind or afraid, they avoid. We don’t want to experience negative emotions if we can avoid it. But when we avoid, we fall further behind. That cycle very easily becomes self-reinforcing. And spending money to feel less bad is not the way to go. Delivering trainings on generative AI at the Tony Blair Institute, with governments, and with nonprofits and funders, and more broadly talking to people about AI, I see how common this anxiety is, including among very capable people who are not remotely “behind” in any meaningful sense. In every training I've run, the first job is always making people feel safe enough to admit where they actually are on AI, and lowering their stress about not being further along in the journey. Teaching concepts, prompts or tools always comes second. And if it helps, remember that all the people with AI in their titles, who are supposed to be on top of this, feel behind as well. My wonderful colleague Astrid Dita wrote a great post about the completely unnecessary impostor syndrome she had taking on a role with AI in the title. I had the same conversation a few months ago with my cousin Majbrit Fonnesbæk Hansen, a long-tenured director leading digital transformation for the past 15 years, and with other colleagues and collaborators. There are new features in Claude and ChatGPT I haven't tried (as Anthropic literally ships new features every day!), lots of tools on my backlog to try out, and in spite of daily AI newsletters and podcasts, there are lots of developments I'm at weeks or months behind on. That is how literally everyone feels. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something and actively wants you to feel dread, shame and anxiety so you’ll part with your hard-earned money. Don’t let the AI grifters and social climbers stress you out. But feel free to join me in calling them out!