AI fomo – the fear of being left behind

Fomo (Fear of missing out) has changed. It used to be about beach photos. Now it's about getting left behind in a technological revolution. Our columnist Markus Sekulla on the feeling that you don't want to be the one with the abacus when everyone else has a calculator.

The other week at a birthday barbecue. A guy I know, mid-40s, something in sales, stands next to me at the grill and asks: "Hey, this Claude thing. Do I need to know how to use it?" He says it the way you ask your doctor whether that spot on your arm is something to worry about. Not curious. Concerned.

I say: Yes, get into it. He nods. Then he asks: "But where do I even start? I google it and get 40 courses thrown at me. Prompt engineering, agents, workflows. I feel like the train left the station a long time ago."

The answer I give him is the one good news: The train hasn't left. There isn't even a schedule.

Two flavors of fomo

The best way I can describe AI fomo is a matrix. X-axis: actively using AI or not. Y-axis: has prior knowledge or not. fomo lives in the two extremes.

There are the newcomers like my friend at the grill. The ones who haven't really started yet and stare at the mountain of tools, jargon, and LinkedIn posts like it's a menu in a language they don't speak. This group thinks: Everyone else is way ahead of me.

Then there's the second group. The ones already deep in it. Prompting for years, testing tools, building workflows. And every morning they scroll through their discords and see someone who did in four minutes with a single prompt what took them two hours yesterday. Tokenmaxxing, overage charges from burned-through limits, and still that nagging feeling: It's not enough.

Welcome to Club fomo.

Research suggests that higher AI literacy can reduce the anxiety. But from my professional circle I know: Everyone deep in the bubble knows the other side too. The more you learn, the more you see what you don't know. And what others apparently already do.

Fear at every level

What makes this so pervasive: It's not just individuals. Companies feel the AI fomo too. Read about a competitor rolling out AI and cutting costs, and you feel it instantly.

And then there's the geopolitical level. In early June, the US government restricted worldwide access to Anthropic's latest models, Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5. National security reasons, they said. The EU has been negotiating with Anthropic and Washington ever since, trying to get access to technology it didn't build itself. A European Commission spokesperson said Europe needs to strengthen its technological sovereignty. Ursula, Friedrich, and Emmanuel are no less afraid of falling behind right now than my buddy at the grill.

AI Knowledge Is a Moving Target

There's this line you hear at every other conference keynote by now: "AI won't replace you. But someone who understands AI will." Coined in 2022 by economist Richard Baldwin at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Every keynote speaker since has recycled it at least once.

I think the line no longer holds up. But of course it scared us for four years into thinking we'd miss the train.

And here's the bad news: You can't just take one course, hang a certificate on the wall, and call yourself an expert. You could and it might work for a year, but then it’s going to be a hard wake up. AI is not Excel, where you learn it once and you're set. AI changes constantly and maybe exponentially. What was state of the art in January is a footnote by June.

The very German "I have a certificate, therefore I know it" doesn't work with AI.

But these things might:

1. Curiosity beats completeness. Someone who tried one prompt and understood why it worked is further ahead than someone who bookmarked twenty tool lists and never opened a single one.
2. See social media feeds for what they are. Social media is full of people flexing their AI results like they just restaged the moon landing. The truth is: most of them are experimenting just like us. Same as Instagram, LinkedIn mostly shows the highlight reel.
3. Start as a self-learner. I taught myself everything I know about AI. One YouTube video a day, and after a few weeks you have a solid overview. I'm linking some of my go-to channels below. The upside: minimal time investment, maximum feeling of being in the loop. Not into videos? A newsletter works too. Or the extensive materials that Anthropic, for example, makes available for free.
4. Solve a real problem, don't build abstract knowledge. Not: "I need to learn AI." Instead: "Can AI help me do this one thing faster or better?" The path there is usually shorter than you think. Just build a presentation about a hobby on Gamma. Or ask ChatGPT to help plan a trip.

tl;dr

AI fomo feels like the door is closing. But it's not. It's just opening. If you start now, you're not late. If you start now, you're in the early half. fomo paralyzes. And we shouldn't let it. Ten years from now, we'll look back at this moment the way we look at people who said in 1998: "The internet? That'll never catch on." The carousel is spinning faster this time. But you can still jump on. Put down the abacus, pick up the calculator, start.

My favorite YouTube channels:

https://www.youtube.com/@princeeliot

https://www.youtube.com/@SandeepSwadia

https://www.youtube.com/@JeffSu

https://www.youtube.com/@TinaHuang1

https://www.youtube.com/@futurepedia_io