AI's Promise Met the Reality of Human Inertia

When ChatGPT arrived, the writing industry panicked. Freelance gigs dried up. Kindle Unlimited filled with AI-generated stories. News articles everywhere started to sound the same.

The fear spread beyond writers. Image models replaced artists. Then the large language models crept into six-figure tech jobs – the same roles that boomed through the pandemic. Suddenly, ChatGPT or Claude could generate code in seconds. The outlook turned bleak.

Pushback came. People started calling it "AI slop." They wanted work with soul. "Data centre" became a phrase that drew scorn. Reddit split between those fighting for the technology and those fighting against it.

So the technology smashed expectations, ruffled feathers, and left everyone with a question. In 2026, you can build an app with almost no developer experience. You can write a book through recursive prompting. You can generate fantastical images of anything. Yet most people just... don't.

The barrier fell. The tools arrived. The inertia stayed.