Refusal Is a Choice. It's Just Not a Good One.
Spreadsheets didn't eliminate finance teams but professionals who refused to learn them were replaced by ones who did. AI is following the same pattern. The gap is already forming. Refusal is a choice. It's just not a good one.
I've watched this dynamic play out across every technology wave. Personal computing. The internet. Ecommerce. Now AI.
In each shift, the risk wasn't the technology. It was the people who decided it didn't apply to them.
Spreadsheets didn't eliminate finance teams. But finance professionals who refused to learn them found themselves replaced by ones who did. The internet didn't eliminate merchants. But merchants who ignored it lost ground to ones who didn't.
AI is following the same pattern. The tools are widely available. Access isn't the issue. The separation is forming between people who are compounding their capability with AI and people who are waiting to see if it matters.
It matters. The gap is already forming inside organizations. Same role. Same company. Very different output.
Refusal is a choice. It's just not a good one.