TL;DR: The enthusiast who name-drops models and the refuser who turns every conversation into a complaint about AI are both annoying. Serious AI adoption is quiet: the professional uses the tool where it helps, ignores it where it doesn’t, and keeps clear about which is which. That’s what I tell clients about AI.
I’ve got little use for either loud camp.
AI is a tool. Treat it like one and you’ll do fine. Let it do your work for you and you’ll have problems. The people I respect most in this whole argument are the ones who never bring it up. They use the tool on Tuesday, skip it on Wednesday, and spend their energy on the work itself.
The two caricatures the doubter is right to dislike
The pro-AI caricature is the loud adopter who posts about prompts every day, name-drops models in meetings, and holds strong opinions about which platform is winning this month. I find that person exhausting. The irritation comes from social signaling and from enthusiasm standing in for results, and the loud adopter often produces worse work than the quiet professional who just uses the tools where they help.
The professional uses AI where it helps and doesn’t use it where it does not.Share on X
The anti-AI caricature is the loud refuser, who turns every conversation into a complaint about AI and wears abstention like a credential.
That’s a weak position too. Refusing a tool out of pride doesn’t make anybody’s work better. It makes them slower, and a little smug about it. Both caricatures make their relationship to technology the center of their professional identity, and the serious professional avoids that move on both sides.
What does serious AI adoption look like?
The people I respect most in this whole argument are the ones who never bring it up.
The third version of AI adoption is the one that almost nobody writes articles about, because it doesn’t make for sharp content. (See how Victoria Chemko advises executive teams on AI) The professional uses the tools where they help and doesn’t use them where they don’t. They develop working judgment about which case is which through actual use. They don’t post about the tools, don’t hold opinions about which platform is winning, and don’t announce their adoption to colleagues.
The tools are part of how the work gets done, the same way email and calendaring software are part of how the work gets done. Nobody talks about their email adoption strategy. The serious AI user works the same way.
That’s how I work. I use AI every day as a digital assistant: it cleans up interview transcripts, helps me put together session summaries for clients, and gives me a first pass at an outline. Then I close it and do the writing myself. I think about it about as often as I think about my calendar.
This version is undramatic and quiet, and that’s why it’s the right version for most working professionals. The professional’s identity doesn’t become tied to the technology. Technology becomes one of many tools, useful in some cases, useless in others, ignored when not relevant. The judgment about when to use it lives in the professional’s head and shows up in the work product instead of in the professional’s self-presentation. A piece on the practical version of this covers how working professionals integrate AI in real work, away from the rhetoric on both sides.
What does serious AI adoption look like in a working week?
The quiet professional opens an AI chat tool when they have a task it helps with.
They use it for the task, get the output, integrate the useful parts, and close the tool. They don’t return to it for tasks where they’ve learned it doesn’t help. The professional doesn’t check news about AI more often than they check news about any other working tool. The total time they spend on AI as a topic, outside of using it for specific tasks, is close to zero.
Over a working week, the integration might look like this. Monday: clean up a meeting transcript using AI, takes ten minutes including verification. Tuesday: draft a first pass of a routine memo by typing the rough points into AI, rewrite the result into voice, takes fifteen minutes. Wednesday: nothing, because the day’s work is all category-two judgment and category-three client meetings where AI has nothing to add. Thursday: use AI to summarize a research document for background context, verify the key claims against the source, takes twenty minutes.
Friday: nothing again, because the day is mostly meetings and direct work. The cumulative AI time is under an hour.
Total time saved is several hours, because the tasks AI handled would have taken longer by hand. The professional notices none of this consciously after a few months because the integration is just how the work happens now.
Serious adoption is small and steady: under an hour of AI use in the week, saving several hours of work.
What discipline keeps AI adoption honest?
From the podcast
Martin Ricketts is blunt about the cost of entry for anyone running a business, on Leaders and Their Stories:
If you’re running a business, pay for the things.Twenty dollars a month is the price of the assistant you keep saying you cannot afford to hire.
The serious professional has one discipline that distinguishes them from the loud adopter and from the abstainer. They check, on a regular basis, whether the tools are still helping. The check is a habit of noticing. When the AI output requires more cleanup than doing the task by hand would have taken, that’s a signal the tool has stopped helping for that task.
If the output is shaping the professional’s voice in ways they don’t approve of, the tool has crossed into voice work that should stay human. And when the professional can’t remember writing the recent work, that’s a signal to step back and rewrite by hand for a while.
That last signal is the one I’d take most seriously. If you can’t remember writing something that carries your name, the tool has taken over work that was supposed to be yours. I tell writers the same thing: once the machine is doing your thinking, you’ve handed away the one part of the job nobody else can do for you.
None of those signals require sophisticated detection. The professional notices them in the course of normal work, the way they notice when any other tool is no longer serving them. The discipline is the willingness to act on those signals when they appear.
Stop using the tool for the task that no longer benefits. Rewrite by hand for a period. Change the workflow to push the tool back into the safe zone.
A piece on bringing humans back into the work covers the diagnostic for this in more detail.
How the effect builds over years
After two or three years of working this way, the quiet professional has accumulated something neither the loud adopter nor the loud refuser has.
They have working judgment about a class of tools, built from real use across many specific tasks. That judgment lets them decide when and how to use AI without consulting anyone. The judgment is portable. It transfers to new tools, new models, and new use cases as the technology evolves.
The professional doesn’t need to chase each new release, because they can evaluate any new offering against the judgment they already have.
The loud adopter chasing every release has collected novelty and very little judgment, because each use was short and shallow. The loud refuser is in worse shape, and that’s a pity, because plenty of refusers are smart people with good instincts. They’ll start from zero whenever they finally engage, probably under deadline pressure, with no time to build what experienced users already have.
Whatever the technology becomes over the next decade, the quiet professional is positioned for it. They built their judgment through use, and use is the only thing that produces judgment.
| Trait | Loud adopter | Loud refuser | Quiet professional |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical behavior | Posts about prompts, name-drops models | Turns every conversation into a complaint about AI | Uses the tool where it helps, skips it where it doesn’t |
| Effect on the work | Often worse than the quiet professional’s | Slower, and a little smug about it | Judgment shows up in the work product |
| Place in identity | Technology at the center | Technology at the center | One tool among many |
| After a few years | Novelty, very little judgment | Starts from zero, likely under deadline | Portable judgment that transfers to new tools |
My take
Quiet users end up ahead of both the loud fans and the loud refusers. Use the tool where it helps, drop it where it doesn’t, and keep checking which is which. If the cleanup takes longer than doing it by hand, stop using it for that task. If you can’t remember writing something with your name on it, go back to writing by hand for a while. Judgment comes from use, and there’s no other source for it.
The real close
This series has tried to take the doubter position seriously, name what’s correct in it, and engage with what is mistaken. The doubters who are right will remain right, in the categories of work AI doesn’t affect. Those who are partly right will find the case for engagement convincing on the points where their work overlaps with what AI does. Doubters who were wrong about the fad framing or the ethical-refusal framing have, I hope, found a more useful position to take than the one they came in with.
The single thing I would have a thoughtful doubter take from this series is the structural test from the previous article. Look at your working week. Identify the category mix. Decide which side of the line you’re on, with honest data instead of inherited skepticism.
From that decision, the right answer for you is either to engage with the tools where they help your specific work, or to continue staying out with informed reasons instead of reflexive ones. Either outcome is fine.
What I won’t defend is the refusal to look at all.
Staying out because you tried the tool and it didn’t help your work is a real decision, and I respect it. Staying out because you decided years ago it was a fad is plain stubbornness, and the gap it creates keeps widening whether you’re watching or not. Look once, decide once, and then go back to the work that’s yours, with whatever tools serve it best.
Serious adoption has no badge and no certification. The Birth of the Augmented Human is my book on that quiet path, where AI makes you more capable.
Frequently Asked Questions
- ChatGPT Plus launches, it costs $20 a month, Search Engine Land
