Human Instinct Is to Keep AI at Arm's Length

Human instinct is to keep AI at arm's length.

Use it for the familiar. Don't let it near anything important. Don't trust it with the work that really matters.

It feels sensible. Safe, even. But it's also what's holding most organisations back.

If you've ever learnt to ski, you'll know that leaning down the mountain is the most counterintuitive thing you have to master.

Everything in your body tells you to lean away from the slope. It's basic survival instinct. Lean uphill. Stay safe. Don't fall. But that's exactly what makes you lose control, even when you're moving slowly.

To ski properly, you have to do the opposite. You have to lean into the slope. You have to trust the physics, and do the thing that feels completely wrong.

My 18-year-old son Will has been teaching beginners all season in Austria. He's back tomorrow from his gap year. The real skill isn't skiing. It's helping people override that instinct and trust something that feels dangerous.

It's exactly what we see with AI adoption in organisations. The instinct is to keep it at arm's length. Use it like Google. Let it tidy things up. Keep it away from the work that actually matters.

But the teams getting ahead are doing something very different. They are letting AI challenge their thinking. They are using it for strategic work, not just to polish documents.

Two years of working in AI adoption has shown us that the organisations, and specifically the leaders, who are moving forward are the ones willing to push through that discomfort.

The hard part isn't the technology. It's overcoming the instinct that tells you to lean away from the thing that feels uncertain.

Maybe that's what we need more of in business right now. People who can help others lean in to what feels uncomfortable, until it becomes second nature.

AI adoption is a human challenge. Not a tech one.