Generalized AI Anxiety

Theory #10 | Agency in the face of the current new thing

With a new wave of AI advancements bursting into the mainstream, there are lots of questions. Much of them are about AI’s collective impact to humanity, society, and specfic communities. But there’s something big emerging at the individual level too — an existential question: In the age of AI, where do I fit in? It’s a conversation permeating dinners, group chats, and honest online discourse.

Generalized AI anxiety

When we introduce new machines, we also disrupt social structures, games, and the rules of those games. With paradigm shifts come lots of progress, yes. But agents of progress are agents of chaos too. They create agitation and anxiety.

I see many shades of this, but I’ll narrow it down to three major types:

• Anxiety of incompetence: my skills are devalued and i have to learn new ones

• Anxiety of irrelevance: people might not relate to, value, or think about me

• Anxiety of uncertainty: I don’t know what the future holds and it feels fickle

Encircling these is a overall feeling of lac…