The People Pushing Back on AI Aren't the Ones You Should Worry About
Everyone focuses on getting the skeptics on board, but the real risk is the people who already think AI can do everything. The strongest developers are usually the most resistant, and that's exactly right.
I’ve been training teams on AI across different levels of technical experience, and the pattern I keep seeing is not the one most people expect. The biggest challenge isn’t convincing the skeptics to try AI, it’s managing the people who are already convinced AI is going to do the work for them.
The skeptics have a point
The strongest developers I’ve worked with are usually the most resistant to AI. They tried it, it didn’t make the decisions they would have made, and they moved on. They’re not being stubborn, they’re being precise, because these are people who spent years getting really good at their craft and when AI gives them something that doesn’t meet their standard they lose patience with it fast. But those are exactly the people you want using AI, because they have the judgment to catch when it gets something wrong.
The enthusiasm is the problem
The people most excited about AI tend to be the ones with the least technical depth. They see AI generating code and they think it’s going to do the work for them, and in some cases it looks like it does, especially when the team doesn’t have a strong development process to begin with. Nobody is checking whether the output is actually good. They don’t review patterns, they don’t validate the architecture, and when AI hallucinates or makes a decision that breaks something they don’t have the experience to notice. I’ve seen AI delete databases and generate code that quietly breaks things downstream, and the enthusiasts don’t question any of it because the output looks right.
Training isn’t the real question
Everyone wants to give the whole company AI tools and train everyone equally, and I understand the impulse. But not everyone should be using AI the same way. Someone who writes good specs and understands what they’re asking for will get completely different results than someone who doesn’t check what AI gives back. The people who get the most out of AI are the ones who are already curious and disciplined enough to research it on their own, who experiment carefully and actually want to understand how it works before they rely on it. The judgment behind the tool matters more than the tool itself, and no amount of training is going to replace that.