Some time ago, my wife and I were planning a trip to France and Italy for our family (mostly my wife because she’s just awesome), and I was doing the DevOps Director thing, blissfully unaware of the impactful changes that AI would soon have on my emotional state, my existential complacency, and my hope for an abundant future.
Then it happened: the launch of ChatGPT.
I was, like many were, swept up in the "wow"-ness of it all. But instead of excitement, I felt dread and anxiety.
I had been working in tech for over a decade, but this wasn’t just another library or cloud service. This was different, and I knew it. I felt like I was watching a tsunami cresting in the distance. I didn’t know how to prepare, but I just knew I couldn’t ignore it.
That dread didn’t go away for weeks. Everything I read about AI and every AI podcast—Lex Fridman, Dwarkesh Patel, and the like—added to the pressure. Was I becoming obsolete? And remember, I was a director, so it wasn’t just my livelihood I was worried about, but that of my team as well. Would my team—and, indeed, my whole industry—become obsolete?
I started digging into various tools and approaches that could maybe help me or my team. Very often, I would see new tools, less than a year old, that clearly demonstrated that they could fully automate DevOps. How could we compete with that?
Then we actually went on our trip to France and Italy, and at precisely that time, Italy banned the use of ChatGPT. The romantic part of me thinks there's maybe something to that, but regardless, it made me pay attention.
As I sat on a train between Italy and France, gazing out upon the sheer majesty of the Alps and overcome with awe, a shift began to happen. I remembered to be curious. I decided to lean into the tools and figure out how to make the most of them. I stopped passively consuming hype and started actively engaging.
I poked at the tools. I broke things. I wrote ugly prompts. I tried again. and again. ..and again... And eventually, something opened up.
I realized this wasn’t about job loss. It was about job shift.
I started seeing the patterns. Not in the code—but in the value. I saw how and where humans fit: with emerging roles and skills that mattered now.
This journey—from dread to empowerment—is what AI literacy is about.
It’s not about knowing how to train a model or deploy it at scale. It’s about recognizing what AI can and can’t do and how it fits into your world. It’s about seeing the technology clearly enough to spot opportunities before they become threats.
For anyone feeling that same dread I felt, my unsolicited advice: don’t run from it. Sit with it. Get curious. Make space to explore. You don’t have to become an expert. But you do need to become literate.
Because the future isn’t waiting for us to feel ready.
It’s time to board the train.
Mick McGrath is the Principal AI Consultant at Bitovi. He leads workshops to help teams embrace AI and identify valuable use cases. If you're ready to start your AI journey, explore our AI Adoption Workshops.
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