I'm Not Scared of AI Anymore. I'm Scared of How We Use It. [Raw Session]
August 12, 2026
"I realized I wasn't looking at a brain with an imagination. I was looking at an equation." That single realization completely changed how I think about AI. A year ago, I was genuinely worried it might replace my career. Since then I've spent hundreds of hours building with AI, reading about it, experimenting with different models, and trying to understand how these systems actually work. Somewhere along the way, my fear changed. I stopped being afraid of the technology itself and became much more interested in how people choose to use it. In this Raw Session, I'm thinking out loud about that shift, why I'm more optimistic about AI today, and why I believe the biggest risks may not come from the technology at all. If you've gone through a similar journey—from fear, to curiosity, to cautious optimism—I'd love to hear where you've landed. Chapters: 00:00 Why I wanted to make this video 00:58 The fear didn’t disappear, it moved 01:22 Learning AI out of survival 03:02 Why understanding AI changed my fear 04:01 Seeing the math behind the model 06:43 When the magic turned back into math 07:23 AI as amplification, not replacement 08:25 How I use AI for Slow Builds 10:24 What actually scares me now 11:11 People making decisions without understanding AI 12:12 Why I’m still excited about the future
Transcript
I'm Not Scared of AI Anymore. I'm Scared of How We Use It. [Raw Session]
00:00 — I Used to Be Scared
Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds.
I wanted to make this video because I realized something recently.
A year ago, if you had asked me what I thought about AI, my answer would have been completely different than it is today.
I was scared.
Not in a science-fiction kind of way. Not because I thought robots were taking over the world tomorrow.
I was scared because I genuinely thought my career might completely disappear and I'd have to figure out a way to start over.
I've been a software developer for decades, and when AI started getting really good at writing code and becoming part of our lives, it felt extremely personal.
I thought,
"If it can do what I do... what happens next?"
So this isn't really a video about what AI can do.
It's about how my fear has changed.
Because interestingly, it didn't disappear.
Like I said...
It just moved.
As excited as I am about AI and what it's going to do for the world, what really scares me now is the other side of it...
...the people making the decisions.
01:22 — Going Down the Rabbit Hole
Once that fear showed up, I couldn't ignore it.
Every night I was studying.
Trying every new model.
Testing new tools.
Every coding assistant.
Watching YouTube.
Reading Reddit.
Reading papers.
Anything I could get my hands on.
Part of that was survival.
I was trying to figure out how my industry was going to change.
I needed to understand AI before it understood my career.
The more people I talked to, the more I realized I wasn't alone.
Almost everyone I spoke with had gone through the same thought process.
The same fears.
The same late nights.
The same learning.
People just approached it from different directions.
For me...
I didn't want to be left behind.
I wanted to understand the tools.
I wanted to know how I could use them in my own work.
How I could teach people on my team.
How I could become more productive.
My thinking was simple.
If someone is hiring for a job, they're going to choose the person who already understands how AI fits into that role.
Not the person who's trying to learn the job and AI at the same time.
03:02 — What Changed
Here's what surprised me.
The deeper I went...
the less scared I became.
Not because AI stopped improving.
It's improving incredibly fast.
What changed was my understanding of what AI actually is.
The first realization I had was that no matter how good AI becomes...
there still needs to be a person leading it.
Someone orchestrating everything.
The architect.
The project manager.
The person who understands the business.
The person who knows how all the pieces fit together.
AI wasn't replacing that person.
It was helping that person.
04:02 — When the Math Clicked
Then something else happened.
I had a friend staying with me who's also a software developer.
Instead of just using AI like I had been...
he'd gone much deeper into how the models actually work.
We spent hours talking.
How LLMs are built.
Vectors.
Matrices.
Probabilities.
Tokens.
Weighting.
Predictions.
How answers are actually generated.
Interestingly...
a lot of what we talked about came from my math degree more than my computer science degree.
Computer science teaches the programming.
The software.
The hardware.
The architecture.
But underneath all of that...
AI is mathematics.
Statistics.
Probability.
Linear algebra.
Vectors.
Matrices.
Tokens.
Weights.
Predictions.
He gave me a simple example.
"I like pizza. What do you like?"
Then we broke it down mathematically.
How the probabilities work.
How hallucinations happen.
How predictions are made.
Then we looked at nursery rhymes and Bible verses.
Depending on the model...
and depending on what it had been trained on...
you'd get different answers.
That was when everything clicked.
It wasn't magic anymore.
It was still incredible.
But it wasn't magic.
I realized I wasn't looking at a brain with imagination.
I was looking at mathematics.
When the magic turned back into math...
my fear almost disappeared.
06:50 — AI Isn't a Person
I think one mistake a lot of us make is treating AI like another person.
I still catch myself doing it.
You ask a question.
It gives a thoughtful answer.
It feels like you're talking to someone.
But that's not what's happening.
It's predicting.
It's recognizing patterns.
It's applying weights.
It's mathematics.
An enormous amount of training data...
processed incredibly fast.
Understanding that changed everything.
Instead of thinking,
"This thing is replacing people..."
I started thinking,
"This thing is amplifying people."
Those are two completely different ideas.
07:40 — Expanding Specialists
That's when I started looking at AI differently.
Instead of replacing specialists...
it expands specialists.
It widens the path.
Lawyers spend less time digging through documents.
Accountants spend less time organizing receipts.
Software developers prototype faster.
Scientists and researchers find patterns they might have missed.
None of those people stop being experts.
They simply spend more time doing the work only they can do.
I like to say...
they fail faster.
They eliminate bad ideas faster.
They narrow down possible solutions faster.
That's exciting.
That's where I think AI becomes transformative.
Not because it removes humans...
because it increases what one human can accomplish.
08:30 — How I Use It
I'll use this YouTube channel as an example.
I used to spend hours trying to organize scripts.
Thinking about titles.
Descriptions.
First comments.
Thumbnail ideas.
Trying to organize my thoughts.
Now...
I throw my ideas into AI.
I talk through them.
It helps me organize them.
It helps with descriptions.
First comments.
Website formatting.
Timestamps.
Thumbnail ideas.
Then after I record...
I run the transcript back through it.
It cleans it up.
Organizes it.
Helps me find clips.
It saves me hours.
AI isn't creating my content.
I'm still the one making the videos.
It's acting more like an editor and organizer.
That's how I like using it.
It lets me spend more time thinking...
and less time formatting.
10:18 — What Actually Scares Me Now
So what scares me now?
AI doesn't.
People do.
One thing that still worries me...
is who trains these models.
A model only knows what it's trained on.
If someone intentionally trains it poorly...
or pushes a particular viewpoint...
or fills it with misinformation...
that's concerning.
But even beyond that...
what really worries me...
is people making decisions about AI without understanding it.
Executives don't need to understand vectors or matrices.
But when they're making hiring decisions...
layoffs...
or deciding the direction of entire companies...
they need someone at the table who understands the technology.
What worries me is when AI becomes nothing more than a buzzword.
People hear,
"AI can replace ten employees."
without ever asking whether that's actually true.
Because that's not what I see from people using it every day.
11:50 — The Waiting Game
Right now it feels like a lot of companies are waiting.
Hiring slows.
Projects slow.
People get nervous.
Everyone watches everyone else.
They're trying to figure out...
How much can AI actually do?
I honestly don't know how this ends.
Maybe some companies overreact.
Maybe others don't move fast enough.
I don't know.
But I do know this.
I don't wake up worried that AI itself is coming for my job anymore.
12:20 — Looking Ahead
If anything...
I'm more excited than ever.
Not because AI solves everything.
Far from it.
I'm excited because I think it lets people build things they couldn't build before.
I think it expands individual capability.
I think it's going to help medicine.
Research.
Software.
Small businesses.
People with ideas who never had the resources before.
I'm still curious.
I'm still paying attention.
But my fear has changed.
I used to be afraid of the technology.
Now I'm more concerned about the people making decisions based on hype...
without really understanding what the technology actually is.
Hopefully we'll learn to use AI the right way.
We'll embed it into the parts of our lives where it genuinely helps.
We'll make better software.
Better businesses.
Better medicine.
Better tools.
I'm very excited to see where it goes.
Thanks for watching.
Bye.