Your company just announced yet another AI initiative. Your LinkedIn feed is full of think pieces about the jobs it’s going to kill. Your colleagues are either panicking or pretending it isn’t happening.
You’re not sure which is worse.
Fear is useful when it alerts you to danger. It becomes a problem when it becomes your entire strategy.
See the data from a recent Angus Reid poll:
57% of those surveyed have a negative view of AI. Only 11% are optimistic.
Sit with that for a second.
That’s not just a stat about public sentiment. That’s a map of the competitive landscape you’re operating in. The overwhelming majority of your colleagues, your competitors, your industry peers — they’re scared, checked out, or waiting for someone else to figure it out.
Which means the gap between the people engaging seriously with AI and the people avoiding it is widening every single day. That gap is an opportunity. A significant one. And most people are too busy being afraid to notice it.
From what I’ve observed, there are 4 camps forming around how people are responding to AI. Which camp you land in will have a direct impact on your career trajectory from here.
The four camps
1. The Doomer
Core belief: AI is going to ruin everything.
All the Doomer can see is AI as a threat. They expect job loss, economic havoc, manipulation, fake everything, and maybe even robot hellfire while the evil corporations rake in record profits.
What makes this convincing is that there’s a grain of truth here. The risks are real. But the Doomer gets trapped because fear becomes prophecy. They spend so much energy worrying about the pending disaster that they don’t build capability. They can’t because they’re consumed by fear.
2. The Denier
Core belief: This is all hype. It’s going to blow over and life will go back to normal.
This person treats AI as if it were a fad. A toy. Something executives got way too excited about, as there’s no real business value. Again, there’s some truth here too. Every new technological shift comes with a lot of hype and expectations. We certainly have a lot of that right now. There’s also a lot of garbage around, with vendors slapping “AI-powered” on everything.
But denial is still a bad bet. If you’ve spent time really working with these tools, you know they aren’t going away. And you can see the level of investment being made. That’s a powerful signal.
3. The Utopist
Core belief: AI will solve everything, and soon.
This is the breathless techno-savior camp. AI will cure disease, eliminate drudgery, democratize expertise, unlock abundance. The Utopist shares every breathless headline. They’re all-in on the hype cycle — convinced the singularity is eighteen months out and anyone who isn’t excited just doesn’t get it.
The dangerous part isn’t the optimism. It’s the passivity hiding inside the optimism.
The Utopist doesn’t build capability either — they’re waiting for the tools to do it for them. They’re not preparing; they’re spectating. And when the revolution takes longer than expected, or arrives differently than they imagined, they’re just as unprepared as the Doomer.
Blind optimism is still a bet you didn’t make consciously.
4. The Sovereignist
This is my camp.
Core belief: AI is real, powerful, risky, useful, and not going away. So the only sane move is to engage with it deliberately.
The Sovereignist doesn’t worship AI, believing it will solve everything, take all the jobs, and leave us with a life of nothing but leisure. But nor do they hide from it.
They use it.
They test it.
They question it.
They learn its strengths and weaknesses.
They use it to sharpen their thinking, expand their options, compress low-value work, and build more agency in a changing world.
They see AI as a tool to become more capable, more adaptive, and more free.
The key contrast
The Doomer is ruled by fear.
The Denier is ruled by avoidance.
The Utopist is ruled by fantasy.
The Sovereignist is ruled by agency.
I don’t believe the future belongs to the Doomers, the Deniers, or the Utopists. It belongs to the people willing to engage, experiment, learn, and adapt. Those who seize agency. The Sovereignists.
The opposite of fear is not blind optimism. It is agency.
What’s your AI strategy?
Organizations are all scrambling to build out an AI strategy, understanding that a technological revolution is underway. The thing is, I believe everyone should have an AI strategy, not just corporations. How will you use AI in your life?
The most dangerous AI strategy is waiting until your employer figures it out for you.
The old work is ending. Good. Too much of it was soul-crushing busywork dressed up as productivity.
AI is going to change your work.
The question is whether you’ll help shape that change, or wait around until it happens to you.
Pick your camp.
Then start acting like it.