Which Camp Are You In? How People Are Actually Responding to AI Right Now

Most people fall into one of these.

Everybody has an opinion about AI right now. Your pastor mentioned it in a sermon. That one friend who’s always early on everything won’t stop talking about ChatGPT. And the person next to you at work is either quietly using it or quietly pretending it doesn’t exist.

What I’ve noticed after spending the last few years deep in this and building my entire business around it is that the technology itself is almost secondary. How people are responding to it tells you everything about where they’ll be in two years.

And right now, almost everyone falls into one of seven camps. Most people don’t know which one they’re in. But it matters. Because we are at a threshold, and the people who recognize this moment for what it is and act accordingly will have a kind of freedom in the future that the people who don’t, won’t.

The Dabbler

This is the person who’s excited about AI and genuinely trying. They’ve subscribed to newsletters, downloaded apps, and experimented with prompts. They’re putting in effort. Real effort. And the problem is they’re drowning.

There are SO many tools, so many “you need to try this” posts, so many conflicting opinions about what to use and when. The Dabbler is collecting tools the way some people collect cookbooks. Lots of resources, but no meals are actually getting made.

I’ve been in this camp. When I first started with AI, I was everywhere. Trying everything. And I was exhausted without having anything real to show for it. What got me out was a framework. One clear system that told me what to use, when, and why. Once I had that, everything else fell into place.

If you’re a Dabbler, the issue isn’t effort or intelligence. It’s that nobody gave you the structure. The good news is that structure is an easy fix.

The Ostrich

This person thinks AI is going to blow over. They’ve seen trends come and go. NFTs. The Metaverse. Clubhouse. They’re smart enough to know that not everything that gets hyped actually sticks. And they’ve built something that works, whether it’s a business, a career, or a way of doing things that’s been reliable for years. The cost of learning something new feels higher than the cost of waiting.

I understand this one too. But AI isn’t Clubhouse. It’s not going away, and the gap between people who understand it and people who don’t is widening every single month. I watched it happen at a global AI conference in Singapore last year. The people building at the highest levels of this technology are not speculating about whether it will stick. They’re building infrastructure for decades.

The Ostrich isn’t dumb. They’re just making a bet, and the odds are not in their favor.

The Fearful

This camp is bigger than anyone admits.

These are the people reading every headline about AI replacing jobs. They see the articles about automation and about companies laying off entire teams and replacing them with AI tools. And every single one of those articles confirms the thing they’re most afraid of: that there won’t be a place for them in what’s coming.

The fear isn’t irrational. The shift IS real. AI is changing the economics of work in ways that compound month after month.

But fear is a terrible operating system. The Fearful person is so consumed by what might happen that they can’t take action on what’s happening right now. And staying frozen is the thing that actually puts them in the position they’re afraid of.

I haven’t felt this fear. Not because I’m smarter or braver or further ahead on some imaginary timeline. But because in September of last year, God started speaking to me about the Kingdom of Heaven needing to take back territory in the online space, in the technology field, and specifically in AI. I was put on assignment. And if you’re a believer who understands commissioning, you’ll know that this assignment hasn’t been easy. I’ve wanted to quit and throw in the towel more times than I’d care to admit. It has also come with a significant amount of warfare.

The point I’m making is that I haven’t been afraid because I was prepared. When you understand the moment as a spiritual assignment rather than a professional threat, the fear doesn’t land the same way. What I feel is urgency. Not the manufactured kind that marketers use to make you buy something before midnight. Real urgency. The kind that comes from recognizing that this technology is a threshold, and people on the other side of it, people who learn to use it and steward it well, are going to have a freedom that the people who stayed frozen won’t.

This space has been the enemy’s domain. The online world, the technology landscape, the systems that shape how people think, buy, and communicate. And until the people who carry discernment and conviction step into it, that doesn’t change. Blanket avoidance has never taken back territory.

If you’re in the Fearful camp, the fear might be keeping you out of the exact space where you’re needed. (Fear sells. Always has.) The headlines are designed to paralyze. Move anyway. God didn’t give us a spirit of fear. 2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV) states: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind”.

The End Times Crowd

There are people in my world who believe AI is connected to end times prophecy. They see the mark of the beast in systems that centralize control over buying, selling, and identity. Some have concluded this is antichrist-adjacent technology that believers should refuse on spiritual principal.

Some of these concerns come from people who have studied Scripture deeply and are genuinely wrestling with what the rapid advancement of AI means in light of what the Bible says about the last days.

But I will say this. Technology has never been inherently demonic. Fire wasn’t. Neither was the printing press, and neither was the internet. Every tool in human history has been used for both good and evil, and AI is no different. The question was never whether a powerful technology should exist. It’s always been about who’s using it and how.

The biblical response to a powerful tool has always been wisdom, discernment, and stewardship. Use it for good and refuse to use it for evil. Build guardrails. Stay under the authority of the Holy Spirit. That’s the framework I operate from, and I think it’s a far more grounded response than blanket avoidance dressed up as righteousness.

Some people in this camp are operating from genuine conviction. Others are using theology to avoid examining a fear they haven’t named. I’m going to treat both camps the same way, with honesty.

The Resistor

These are the people who’ve made “anti-AI” part of their identity. Writers with downloadable logos declaring their work AI-free. Creators calling for platform bans. The moral high ground crowd. (I wrote about this camp in depth recently if you want the full take.)

Short version: choosing not to use AI is a legitimate personal choice. Turning that choice into a gatekeeping campaign against everyone who made a different one is not.

The All-In Bros

The opposite extreme. This person has automated everything and published everything and reviewed nothing. They treat AI like it replaces thinking, discernment, and editorial standards. They’re the ones flooding every platform with polished, soulless content that says absolutely nothing.

When someone hears “AI content” and pictures generic slop, this is the crowd they’re picturing.

If your entire content strategy is “type prompt, copy output, hit publish,” you are the problem. (And the rest of us are cleaning up after you.)

The Quiet Adopters

This might be the biggest camp of all, and nobody talks about it.

The Quiet Adopter is using AI and getting real results. But they’re not saying a word about it because the climate has become so hostile that admitting you use AI feels like putting a target on your back.

They’ve watched the Resistor crowd attack people for being transparent about using AI. They’ve seen the All-In Bro crowd give every AI user a bad name with their slop. And they’ve decided the safest move is to keep their heads down, use the tools, and never mention it.

The self-preservation instinct makes sense. But it comes at a cost. The people in the middle, the ones with actual standards and actual systems, stay invisible while the loudest voices on both extremes define what “AI user” means.

If you’re a Quiet Adopter, I get it. The transparency question is yours to answer. But the conversation needs more people in it who know what they’re doing, and fewer people yelling from the edges. Just something to sit with.

The Camp I’m In

I’m a Pioneer Explorer. But that label only tells you the method. The reason underneath it is what actually matters.

I mentioned the assignment the Lord gave me. That’s why I do this work. AI is exciting, and there’s money in it, but neither of those is the reason. Someone who carries discernment has to be in this space. And I’d rather it be me than not.

So I use AI every day. I study it obsessively. I’ve built a 92-point guardrails document and a voice training process that makes sure my content sounds like me and not like a machine. (This article went through that process. Every article does.) I’m still figuring things out. The terrain shifts constantly. New tools, new capabilities, new ethical questions that didn’t exist six months ago.

But I have an assignment, and the posture that comes with it. Learn before you automate. Your guardrails need to exist before you scale. And keep moving forward with intention, even when you can’t see what’s around the next bend.

I’m not going to be the person who saw this coming, had the tools and the framework to help people navigate it, and said nothing because the conversation was uncomfortable.

This is the camp I’m inviting you into. We need more people moving for good.

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If you want a responsible on-ramp into understanding AI and learning how to use it without losing your voice, your integrity, or your discernment, the AI Revolution Secrets training is free and it’s where I’d point you.

And if you’re already using AI but want your content to actually sound like you, the AI Writing Guardrails system is the exact framework behind everything I publish. Over 80 patterns to avoid, a voice sample template, example prompts, and a full walkthrough of how I set this up.

P.S. I’ve been in at least four of these camps at different points over the last three years. (I’ll let you guess which ones.)