- 12 Dec, 2025 *
We’d just come back from Saudi Arabia.
My father had been working as an engineer out there since 1990. Six years in the desert, then back to the UK in 1996. I was eleven.
My uncle Barry — one of the first Microsoft Certified Professionals in the UK, the kind of guy who hacked our Sky TV boxes so we could watch every channel without a subscription — sat me down at his desktop PC.
"Nephew, I want to show you something really cool. It’s called the Internet."
I asked what it could do.
"Talk to people all across the world. Store information, like encyclopaedias. Eventually we’ll watch videos and TV on it."
Then he connected.
The modem dialled up. That sound — the static, the handshake, the screech settling into connection. If you were there, you r…
- 12 Dec, 2025 *
We’d just come back from Saudi Arabia.
My father had been working as an engineer out there since 1990. Six years in the desert, then back to the UK in 1996. I was eleven.
My uncle Barry — one of the first Microsoft Certified Professionals in the UK, the kind of guy who hacked our Sky TV boxes so we could watch every channel without a subscription — sat me down at his desktop PC.
"Nephew, I want to show you something really cool. It’s called the Internet."
I asked what it could do.
"Talk to people all across the world. Store information, like encyclopaedias. Eventually we’ll watch videos and TV on it."
Then he connected.
The modem dialled up. That sound — the static, the handshake, the screech settling into connection. If you were there, you remember it.
I was eleven years old, and it blew my mind.
The debates that followed
Within a few years, something strange started happening on television.
Adverts began ending with these odd strings of text. www.mcdonalds.co.uk. www.argos.co.uk. URLs at the bottom of the screen, as if we were supposed to know what to do with them.
It was bizarre. The internet was this thing that existed on a computer in my uncle’s spare room, and now Sainsbury’s was telling you to visit them there.
The debates in homes were predictable.
"What’s the point? We have the Yellow Pages."
"I’d never put my credit card details online. It’s not safe."
"Why would I buy something I can’t see and touch?"
My grandparents were adamant: they would never use a credit card on the internet. Too risky. Too abstract. Too far from how things were supposed to work.
Home delivery meant a letter or a postcard — something someone sent you through the post. Shopping meant going into town. That was the world.
And yet.
Within a decade, my grandparents were buying things online like everyone else. The Yellow Pages became a doorstop. Town centres hollowed out while Amazon warehouses multiplied.
The people who said "never" quietly capitulated. The ones who adapted early built empires.
Humans will be humans
I’m watching the same emotional cycle play out with AI.
The specific fears have changed. The pattern hasn’t.
"AI is just slop."
"It’ll never replace real creativity."
"I can always tell when something’s AI-generated."
"Why would I trust a machine with something important?"
Swap "AI" for "the internet" and "machine" for "website" and you’re back in 1999.
The arguments sound rational. They’re not. They’re emotional responses dressed in logic.
What’s actually happening is identity protection.
When the internet arrived, it threatened businesses and industries. Blockbuster. Travel agents. Print media. But for most people, it didn’t threaten who they were.
AI is different.
AI threatens how people define their value. Their expertise. Their purpose.
"I’m a writer" hits different when a machine can produce passable prose in seconds.
"I’m a designer" hits different when anyone can generate images with a text prompt.
"I’m an analyst" hits different when AI can process data faster than any human team.
The internet changed how we accessed information and commerce.
AI threatens how we define ourselves.
That’s why the emotional temperature is so high. The debate isn’t really about capability. It’s about self-protection.
The acceleration factor
There’s another difference this time, and it’s crucial.
When the internet arrived, there was no public square to discuss it.
No Twitter. No LinkedIn. No YouTube commentators. No algorithmic amplification of the loudest voices.
The debates happened in living rooms, at family dinners, in pubs. They were local. They were slow. They were contained.
AI arrived into a world where social media was already fully established.
Every fear, every hot take, every emotional reaction is immediately broadcast to millions. The algorithm rewards engagement, and nothing engages like outrage and anxiety.
The haters get amplified. The hypebros get amplified. The nuanced middle gets buried.
And folks have short memories, they’ve already forgotten what happened last time a technology this vast took centre stage.
They forgot the Yellow Pages arguments. They forgot the "I’ll never shop online" certainty. They forgot how completely wrong the loudest voices turned out to be.
So they repeat the pattern.
The gap is widening
With the internet, there was a grace period.
Infrastructure had to catch up. Broadband had to roll out. Payment systems had to become secure. Consumer trust had to build slowly. You had years — sometimes a decade — to adapt.
With AI, there’s no infrastructure bottleneck outside of compute.
The tools are already here. They’re already good. They’re improving faster than most people can track.
And while the haters debate whether AI is "real" creativity, operators are quietly building leverage that compounds daily.
Every month someone spends on the side-lines is another month the gap widens.
I’ve built MVPs for £20 that would have cost £20,000 two years ago. I’ve automated workflows that used to take hours per week. I’ve developed skills and systems that make me meaningfully more capable than I was twelve months ago.
Not because I’m special. Because I showed up early and kept learning.
The people refusing to engage aren’t protecting themselves. They’re handing the advantage to everyone willing to do the uncomfortable work of adaptation.
The uncomfortable truth
Change is guaranteed. Like the passing of time.
This isn’t philosophy. It’s physics.
Technology curves don’t care about your comfort. They don’t wait for consensus. They don’t pause while you process your feelings.
The internet didn’t stop because my grandparents were nervous about credit cards.
AI won’t stop because people on LinkedIn are calling it slop.
The only variable is whether you’re dragged by change or surfing it.
I understand the discomfort. I really do.
When your identity and purpose are tied to tasks that might be augmented or replaced, the instinct is to reject the premise. To find reasons why this time is different. To dismiss the capability and hope it goes away.
But I was eleven in 1996, watching my uncle show me something that would reshape the entire world. And the people who said "never" all eventually said "fine."
The only question was how much ground they lost while they resisted.
What I’ve learned from being early
I’ve been early many things my whole life.
Cloud storage when people said "why would I trust my files to someone else’s computer?"
Facebook in 2006 when it was still just university students.
Crypto when it was dismissed as fake money for criminals.
LLMs in January 2023 when most people were still treating ChatGPT as a novelty.
Being early doesn’t make you smart. It makes you comfortable with uncertainty. It means you’ve developed a tolerance for the discomfort of not knowing exactly how something will play out.
Every time, the pattern is the same:
- New technology emerges
- Early adopters experiment
- Mainstream dismisses or fears
- Capability improves
- Dismissal becomes harder to sustain
- Mass adoption happens
- The early adopters have compounding advantages
- The late majority catches up, but from behind
The emotional cycle is human. The outcome is predictable.
The only thing you control is when you start.
The invitation
I’m not here to convince anyone.
If you’ve decided AI is slop and you want nothing to do with it, that’s your choice. I respect autonomy.
But if you’re on the fence — if you’re feeling the discomfort but haven’t written it off entirely — consider this:
The same arguments you’re making now were made about every major technology shift. By smart people. With good reasons.
They were still wrong.
Not because the concerns weren’t valid. But because capability curves don’t care about valid concerns. They just keep climbing.
My uncle was right in 1996. This technology will change the world.
Twenty-eight years later, I’m sitting with another technology that will change the world. And the debates sound exactly the same.
I know which side of that I want to be on.
The modem has already dialled.
The connection is live.
The only question is whether you’re going to explore what’s on the other side.
—Tariq