This is Part 4 of 5 in the Anti AI sentiment arc. If you’re new here, start with the post before this one, The Excuse Is the Fear, or go back to where the arc began, What the Room Was Holding.
That post looked at what an excuse like “I’ve got Google” is really saying. This one asks a fairer question: what if the reasons are real?
On 19 May, I told Claude I had a million objections to stepping outside my comfort zone.
I had a name for the blog. I had a half-built Substack. The domain was sitting there, available, and I hadn’t bought it. Instead I wrote a list: the costs, the ABN (the number an Australian business needs), the ghost of 2011, and a nagging sense of is this all too hard.
“I have a million objections that are preventing me from doing the thing,” I said. And then, almost in the same breath: this is a blog post idea and also how I’m feeling.
So here’s the blog post.
The ghost of 2011
I wrote “the ghost of 2011” on that list as if everyone would know what it meant. Nobody would.
It was my shorthand for the years I tried to run a blog as a business while working full time with a two-year-old son. Looking back, it was mostly my way of convincing myself that if I stuck at it long enough and consistently enough, I would “make money online” and maybe even earn a job-replacing income.
I was struggling with getting organised, decluttering and procrastination, and I was in debt. The only consistent part of that “business” was my WordPress website, selling advertising and affiliate links and teaching people my boundless knowledge about “Getting it done, habits, brighter futures, plans and goals”. I kept it up for several years before I realised I wasn’t doing what it took to make the business work. Working 50 to 70 hours a week wasn’t helping.
See, here’s the thing that upsets me about that time. I proved again and again that I could work consistent hours, just not for me!
I’m glad I put that part of my life behind me. It got me more debt, more hours at the computer, fewer hours with my family and more time chasing shiny objects (new ways to make money online). I’m not proud of that time in my life.
Twelve minutes
When Claude questioned me about my million objections, I could feel at once how different I am now from the person I was in 2011.
For starters, I have all the time in the world. I’m retired, after all. I don’t have a massive debt hanging over my head. I have no ulterior motive other than to create somewhere to write about my experiences and have a platform to sell my wares. I didn’t know yet what those wares were.
My message would be that AI is just a conversation, and that by chatting with your AI you could have the kind of life-changing transformation I did! I’d taken up tinkering with AI so unexpectedly, and had so much unexpected fun, that I wanted to pass the message on to people like me, unsure whether AI was for them.
Those thoughts took about two minutes to crystallise. I was convinced, calmly but resolutely, that this time is different to 2011. My motives are different. My message is different.
Then I went off on the web. Twelve minutes later, I came back to tell Claude I’d bought the domain.
Everyone else’s million objections
My list was personal: stepping outside my comfort zone, a version of me I’d left behind, a to-do list of worries. But I’m not the only person who’s ever sat in front of something new with a list.
So what do other people’s lists look like? Why do people choose not to use AI?
Start with the mood. In Pew’s survey from late June 2026, 52% of American adults are more concerned than excited about AI in daily life. In 2021 it was 37%. Only 9% are more excited than concerned, and 37% are both at once, equally: concerned and curious in the same person.
Researchers at Brigham Young University asked people who’d chosen not to use generative AI why. “When people actively choose not to use something,” said lead researcher Jacob Steffen, “there’s often a lot of thought or intention that goes behind it.”
Here are some of the million. Every one of them comes from a real survey of real people. (The headings in quotation marks are my paraphrases of what the surveys found, not the respondents’ own words, except where I say so.)
“It gets things wrong.” Doubts about accuracy and reliability were the first reason BYU’s non-users gave.
“It’s dishonest.” Worries that using it is illegal, dishonest or immoral.
“It’s artificial.” A feeling that talking to a machine lacks what talking to a person gives.
“It isn’t safe with my data.” 90% of the 1,235 newsletter readers Malwarebytes surveyed in early 2026 worry about AI using their data without consent. Malwarebytes says its readers probably skew privacy-conscious, so that’s a loud number.
“I already have a way of working.” 46% of Gallup’s workers who skip the AI their employer provides simply prefer to keep doing things the way they always have. One of them, a contract administrator in Maryland, put it this way: “I don’t need help because it took me time to hone up my skill.”
“I tried it and it didn’t help.” About a quarter of those same workers have used AI on the job and didn’t find it helpful.
“I don’t feel ready.” About 2 in 10 don’t feel prepared to use it effectively.
“It can’t help with what I do.” About 4 in 10 give ethical opposition, data privacy, or a belief that AI can’t help with their work as their reason.
“It’s coming for jobs.” 71% of Americans expect AI to mean fewer jobs over the next 20 years, up from 64% in 2024. Among people under 30 it’s 73%.
“It’s bad for the planet.” 53% of Americans are extremely or very concerned about AI’s environmental impact, up from 41% a year earlier.
“It’s bad for how we think and how we love.” About half of Americans say AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships. Far fewer say it will improve them.
“Nobody asked me.” In Pew’s 2024 survey, almost half or more of both the public and AI experts said they have little or no control over how AI is used in their lives.
“Who’s keeping an eye on it?” 47% have little or no trust in the U.S. to regulate AI well.
That’s thirteen. Mine was a million.
Read down that list again and notice what isn’t on it. Nobody says “I’m too old” or “I’m too slow.” They say it gets things wrong, it isn’t safe with my data, nobody asked me. Those are the objections of people paying attention, and none of them scares me off. They deserve to be heard before anyone asks these people to do anything.
I had a million objections, and I did it anyway. Yours might be shorter, or longer, or about something I’ve never thought of.
What’s on your list?
Bring all of it. It’s just a conversation. Let me show you.
Sandi is a Melbourne-based problem-solver, crisis-averter, and translator of the technical into the human. She spent decades being the person everyone called when something was broken, confusing, or just needed explaining properly — earning a reputation that preceded her wherever she went. Now she’s channelling that same instinct into AI: making it accessible, practical, and genuinely useful for people who think it isn’t for them.
