The Strange Alliance Against AI
Why 20-year-old creators and 70-year-old executives start from the same word: No.
My 22-year-old daughter is studying cinema with specialization in audio design and video mixing. She is very engaged in these topics, curious about old movies, participating in creative projects at university. I asked her if she uses the new AI tools for assisting in audio or video editing.
Her answer is “No. This thing is build to erase my job.”
A few days later, we have a discussion with her 20-year-old brother. I pull up Perplexity, run a deep research on the topic, start reading it out loud.
He asks: “Where is it coming from?”
And as soon as I explain that it’s Perplexity AI who searched and compiled the summary, I see a dismissive smirk on my son’s face: “Ah. AI. I cannot trust that.”
Same week, different context. I advise a 70-years-old board member on AI strategy and the ways to approach it within the company he oversees. We dive into AI roadmap presented to him by executive committee. The deck is full of “transformation”, “copilots’, “efficiency”. His opinion can be resumed by one word:”No.”
These two groups should be opposites.
One is fighting for entry into the workforce. The other is managing a legacy exit.
One is broke and hungry. The other is wealthy and exposed.
Yet. They formed a strange alliance. They are the two groups most critical for your AI strategy.
The talent who must build it. The governance layer that must sign for it.
And both arrived at the same starting point. Not by asking “how do we implement this AI thing?” They are refusing to play the game at all.
Luddites?
No. It’s a story about rational actors reacting to a broken signal.
The Young: “You Are Stealing the Ladder”
Corporate strategie assume the “digital native” generation will adopt AI tools by default. Even faster than everybody else.
It’s a dangerous assumption.
For a young creator, coder or student, AI is not a tool. It’s a system deployed to degrade their future while lying to their face.
The Blocked Entrance
The first issue is not about being fired. It is about never being hired.
In 2025, US employers announced 54,836 job cuts explicitly tied to AI. But for a student, the real number is the hidden hiring freeze.
He knows that the "junior" tasks - the rough mix, the first draft, the basic code - are exactly what AI solves for cheap.
If a Senior Engineer + AI can do the work of three people, the Junior role evaporates.
To a 22-year-old, the message is loud and clear:
We have automated the entry-level.
You have nowhere to start.
Refusing the tool is a rejection of a system that has removed the very bottom step of the ladder.
The Theft of Apprenticeship
This leads to the second theft. The death of trial and error.
Mastery comes from doing the boring work 100 times. It comes from the "Apprentissage" - trying, failing, fixing and learning the texture of the craft.
If an AI generates a "good enough" mix in seconds, that loop is broken. The student gets the result without the struggle.
By saying "No," they are intuitively attempting to protect the only mechanism that actually builds skill - the right to do it the hard way.
The "Slop" Ecosystem
The third signal is quality.
They see the sycophantic chatbots. Ask ChatGPT for an analysis, and it gives a smooth, hallucinated answer that gets you punished by the professor.
They see the AI slop on the front page of MSN - AI-generated junk falsely claiming 22,000 layoffs at Microsoft.
When my son says, "Generated by AI. I cannot trust that," he is applying a quality filter. In 2026, the "AI" label signals:
Unverified. Generic. Dangerous to my reputation.
The Old: “You Are Lying About the Risk”
The 70-year-old Director does not care about sound design. He cares about the audit committee.
While the CEO talks about "speed," the Director looks at the Risk Register.
The Capex Reality
He sees the bill.
Hyperscalers project $600 billion in capex for 2026, with 75% tied to AI.
Amazon guided to ~$200 billion. Alphabet targets $175–185 billion.
To a seasoned director, this looks like a trap. He knows hardware depreciation is brutal. He knows "if we build it, they will come" is a dangerous strategy.
He sees a disconnect between the cost of the plumbing (trillions in GPUs) and the value of the water (subscription revenue).
He refuses to sign off on unquantified debt.
The "Greater Fool" Exit
He looks at the numbers behind the unicorns.
Their valuations soaring ($500B?) while profitability remains a distant promise.
He saw the Dot-com crash, so the rush to IPO looks less like value creation and more like a risk transfer.
It looks like early investors are rushing to hand the infrastructure bill to the public markets.
To the "greater fools."
That means his company's pension fund, his retail investors.
His "No" is a refusal to be the exit liquidity for a hype cycle.
The Regulatory Deadline
Finally, he looks at the calendar.
It is February 2026. The EU AI Act looms large. By August 2026, obligations for high-risk systems become fully enforceable.
For a global industrial firm, this is not simply a European problem. It is a global standard.
He sees liability shifting. If a hiring algorithm discriminates or a safety system fails, it becomes a breach of law.
When the CEO brings him a pilot with no governance framework, he doesn't see "innovation." He sees Governance Debt.
And he knows he is the one who will have to pay it.
A Strategy Built on the “Thin Middle”
Once again, most corporate AI strategies rely on a dangerous assumption.
They assume the resistance is in the middle - the “frozen layer” of middle management - and that the top (Board) and bottom (Gen Z) are natural allies.
The reality is quite the opposite.
At the bottom, your future builders opt out to protect their craft and their ladder. They distrust the tool because it steals their learning. And their future.
At the top, your sponsors opt out to protect the firm. They distrust the roadmap because the cost is unproven. The governance is not put in place.
You are left with a strategy that relies entirely on the "Thin Middle". Enthusiastic vendors, consultants, and ambitious VPs who need the AI project to justify their promotion.
This is a real bubble.
The 90-Day Test
This alliance is temporary. It can be broken. But not with some training or hype.
You have to fix the broken signal.
Test 1: The Apprenticeship Pivot
Watch your hiring.
If you stop hiring Juniors because “AI does it,” you are burning your future pipeline.
The companies that win will redefine the Junior role - not as “AI Operator,” but as “Apprentice with Superpowers.”
You must give them back the ladder.
Test 2: The Pilot Freeze
Watch the internal budget approvals in March/April.
Boards are no longer signing off on “learning budgets.”
If your Board demands a fully costed risk framework before approving the next AI pilot budget, that is the Governance signal.
The days of “innovation grants” are over. The days of “audit-ready deployment” are coming.
Test 3: The ROI Reality Check
Watch the Q1 earnings calls in April.
Ignore the hyperscalers and chipmakers(who sell “the shovels”. Look at the customers - the banks, retailers, industrials.
If they start slowing down on AI spend because the pilots didn’t scale, the Board’s checkbook will no longer be accessible.
The “greater fool” theory will be tested not at the IPO, but on the P&L of the Fortune 500.
The Final Signal
My son and my client have nothing in common, except one thing.
They both have a high detector for bullshit.
The 22-year-old smells it in the stolen apprenticeship and the sycophantic chatbots.
The 70-year-old smells it in the capex projections and the “greater fool” valuations.
They are sending the same signal.
They are saying “No” to the lie.
If you want them to build your future, stop selling them a story they can see through.
Start with the truth.
Or get used to the word “No.”
Here’s my ask.
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Sources
Challenger, Gray & Christmas - January 2026 Job Cut Report, Feb 5, 2026
Forrester Research / TechCrunch - Are layoffs really driven by AI? Or is it just 'AI-washing'? Jan 2026
Reddit r/microsoft - AI generated crap showing up on MSN front page, Jan 26, 2026
Thomas Tunguz - The Other Leverage in Software & AI, Feb 4, 2026
Make more like this one! Really enjoyed reading!
Now on Substack!!!!!! Excellent, and fantastic article, very interesting, deep and powerfull reflection! Congrats for your writing!!!!