I want you to be afraid of AI (just not for the reasons you probably are)

AI is scary, stokes a lot of fear. If you're worried about it, you're in good company.

But there's a curious thing about “fear” I want you to know because it could reshape your entire life.

On November 30, 2022, ChatGPT came out. Like most people I started to play with it to see what it could do. Then I tried something that truly scared me.

A client had just paid me $25,000 for a marketing strategy for his company. Took me a month for me and my team to build out.

ChatGPT gave me something about 75% as good in seconds. For free.

Do I celebrate because my work got easier or panic because my value just dropped by 99% if others figured out how to do this as well?

Answer? Both.

I mean if you’re not equally afraid of AI as you are excited by it then you definitely aren’t paying attention to what’s happening.

You might be in that boat right now too.

And there's a lot more to be fearful about AI than just being obsolete.

• Your job might go to someone who uses it better than you.

• Your hard-won skills could lose half their market value in 18 months.

• You might already be behind and not know it yet.

The bigger picture fears are real too.

The civilization-level "what happens when this thing gets smarter than us" question doesn't have a clean answer.

Here’s what I want you to staple on the inside of your eyelids…

“The bigger my fear, the more vivid my imagination.”

First understand the difference between “fear” and “danger.”

Fear is your imagination projecting what might happen. It's an emotion, not an event.

Danger is when the thing you feared is actually happening. It's real, it's present, it's no longer in your head.

So if you’re feeling paralyzed with fear, it means you can picture the future clearly… the future you DON’T want.

It takes a powerful mind to picture your industry 3 years from now and feel the ground shifting under you.

To see how fast things are moving and feel the weight of not moving fast enough.

That visualization skill is rare. Most people can't do it. They scroll past the headlines and go back to whatever they were doing yesterday.

So if you’re a bit fearful, it just means you're running scenarios in your head.

Good.

But chances are you're only running one scenario, watching one movie.

It’s like you're watching a Stephen King horror flick. The one where everything you built gets eaten by a machine and you're standing in a parking lot wondering what happened.

That movie is useful. It shows you the stakes.

And personally… I let the fears play out, I look at the worst case scenarios understanding that it’s just a fear, not a danger (yet).

Then I take a deep breath and I use my very vidid imagination to see the future I DO WANT to happen, only now I know where the clowns are hiding and I know where the boobytraps are placed, so they can’t surprise me.

The fears may become very real dangers. You can only control what you can control

But 3 things are entirely yours.

1. How quickly you start. Every week you wait, someone in your space doesn't.

2. How good you get. Surface-level use won't save you. Depth will.

3. What you actually do with it.

I couldn’t leave without giving you my FAVORITE thing about FEAR…

Did you know that there’s only one difference between fear and excitement?

Biochemically-speaking they feel the same.

…increased heart rate, butterflies in the stomach, mind racing.

Fear and Excitement share all of those experiences.

And the only difference between fear and excitement…

…is the story you tell yourself about it.

STOP. Think about that statement before reading the rest of this.

Here’s a time I used this fact to tell myself a different (and crazy) story and change fear to excitement.

Back in March 2019 I broke my wrist, badly.

At 6am I was in the changing room, alone at the hospital getting ready to go into surgery to put a steel plate in my wrist.

Heart racing, butterflies in the stomach, nervous even though I knew it was just my writst. After all, surgery is surgery.

Then I remembered what I just told you: “the only difference between fear and excitement is the story you’re telling yourself.”

Remember I said I have a good imagination too? Here’s what I came up with:

I imagined being a a cowboy in 1870.

I imaged falling off my horse and breaking my wrist the same way.

Back then I’d likely have to deal with a gimpy, painful arm the rest of my life, unable to work and provide for my family.

Then, in my wild imagination, I stumbled across a time-machine that took me to 2018 and put me in a hospital.

I looked around at what looked like alien-futuristic-technology as the Doctor told me, “I know you’re confused but we’re going to take care of you. We’re going to put you to sleep, you won’t feel a thing and in a few months your arm will be back to new.” 

I really embodied that story. I let myself feel the wonder and awe of what I was fortunately enough to experience (instead of worrying what might happen if the anesthesiologist gets carried away.)

I kid you not… when the nurse came to get me and walked me to the operating room I had a smile on my face and a strut in my step.

Next thing I knew I woke up with a cast on my arm, a metal plate in my wrist… and a few months later I was back in the gym.

The stories you tell yourself determine the quality of your life.

The better your imagination is, the better your stories will be.

And even though you might tell yourself a helluva horror story about AI, life, the economy, or anything else…

Remember this.

Stephen King wrote "IT."

…but he also wrote "Shawshank Redemption."

Same imagination. You get to pick which story you're writing.

Hope that was helpful.

Brad Costanzo

P.S. Can’t leave you without some use of AI to help you here can I?

Here’s a prompt I just made called “Fear To Fuel”

Just copy and paste it in your favorite AI chat and follow the directions anytime you’re feeling a bit fearful of anything.