AI Adoption

AI Adoption: My Lived Experience

The FOMO is real. You look around and see smart people vibe-coding their way through the day—whipping up Chrome extensions, Figma plugins, reminder apps, blog engines, even lightweight CRMs that mimic Salesforce, all in minutes. The velocity is dizzying. But let’s pause and ask—is that adoption? Or is it just experimentation?

At best, it’s trial. A beautiful sandbox moment where curiosity meets capability. People are willing to throw money at AI tools the way they once did with crypto or NFTs. This shiny toy, however, is different—because it actually is useful. But useful doesn’t mean embedded. Not yet.

Adoption depends on use cases.
For me, AI is a thought partner. It helps me think better, write clearer, and design ideas faster. That’s my daily use case. For others, it’s code generation. That’s not my lane. And the AI influencers? They make it seem like every workflow is flawless and frictionless. It’s not. Debugging still eats your time. The black box overwhelms you, especially when you don’t understand how things work inside. Your sense of agency often drains in the wrong direction—trying to fix things you didn’t even build.

So what’s holding adoption back?
• The real TAM is still a mirage. GenAI helps some workflows. Not all.
• You’re often a lone wolf. Most peer groups aren’t AI-ready. The conversations are shallow or non-existent.
• Enterprise barriers are real. You can’t even install half these tools on your work laptop. Security, IT, procurement—none of them are on your side yet.
• Retention comes with reps. Tools are sticky only when they remember context, when they feel like they “know” you. That memory is the real magic.

I test ruthlessly. Same prompt across tools. I pick what resonates with the human in me. No single tool wins it all. They all cost roughly the same, so switching doesn’t hurt. But staying? Staying takes trust and time.

We’re still in the earliest innings. In time, AI will have its own disciplines—AI Ops, AI for Devs, AI for Designers, AI in Martech, Sales, and beyond. Slowly, workflows will evolve. Teams will restructure. Products will rebuild. The market will mature.

And in five years, we won’t recognize the world we’re in.

This isn’t hype. This is history being written—with prompts, patterns, and patience.