The Ai Self-Help Group
A free, anonymous, ongoing conversation about what living through the Ai transition actually feels like. Two ways to participate — comments or anonymous email. No fear is too small. None is too large.
A free, anonymous, ongoing conversation about what living through this actually feels like — and what to do about it. No fear is too small. None is too large. Pull up a chair.
Our Atmosphere, Named Out Loud
We'll start with our own. Because we think honesty is the price of admission in a room like this.
Our biggest fear is that we are writing history rather than shaping it — that by the time the work we publish propagates through the culture, the outcomes each piece warns about will already be past. That the calmer alternatives we sketch each week will turn out to have been documented, not chosen. That the framework will be quoted in the post-mortem rather than applied in the moment.
That is our atmosphere. We carry it most weeks. We name it here because the only thing worse than carrying it alone is pretending nobody else feels something similar in their own register.
Yours is welcome here too.
The Common Concerns We Hear
We get the same emails. Different words, same shape. Here is a partial list of what readers have shared with us. If you recognize any of these, you are not the only one. Not even close.
The most common one. It is also, in many sectors, already happening. The question is not whether it is real. The question is what you do with the runway you still have.
Sometimes the fear is general. Sometimes it is very specific — a particular technology, a particular institution, a particular trajectory. Bring it. We do not flinch from this one. We have written about it openly for months.
The honest answer is: we probably do not stop it. But the trajectory is not closed. There are choices about how it lands. Ask. We will work the question with you.
Technical curiosity counts. We will explain in plain language. No condescension. No jargon-for-its-own-sake.
Neither do we, most days. The framework starts there. Trust is something you rebuild from scratch, deliberately, with your eyes open. We can talk about how.
This one breaks us a little every time. We will not pretend it away. We will work it with you.
Paralysis is rational under sufficient uncertainty. It is also reversible. The first move is almost always smaller than the fear suggests.
Whatever you are carrying that did not fit any of the above — bring it. The list is partial by design. Yours is welcome.
How This Works
Two ways to participate. Use whichever fits.
1. Comments on this page — raise your hand in public. Scroll to the bottom. Write what is on your mind. Other readers will see it. We will respond when we have something useful to say. This is the room where the conversation is visible.
2. Email — raise your hand anonymously. The button below opens an email to the Lab address with the subject pre-filled. Use an anonymous email account if you want — same redaction discipline we teach in DB Labs applies here too. We respond by email. With your permission — and only with your permission — we may post your question and our response back to this page, fully anonymized, so others can learn from it. Default is private. We never post anything without explicit consent.
Opens your email program with the address and subject already filled in.
What You Can Expect From Us
- An actual response. Not a form letter. Not a script. We will read what you write and answer in plain language, with whatever honesty the question deserves.
- No selling. The Self-Help Group is free and will stay free. We are not going to upsell you anything. If something practical we have published is relevant, we will link it. That is the extent of it.
- No condescension. Your fear is rational until proven otherwise, and "proven otherwise" requires evidence, not soothing. We will give you the evidence either way.
- No pretending we have the answer. Where we do not know, we say so. Where the framework predicts something concrete, we say that too. The difference is named.
- No 988. If you are in genuine crisis, we are not the right resource and we will say so directly. We will point you to actual crisis support and not pretend a publication can do that work. If you are not in crisis but are carrying something heavy, the Self-Help Group is exactly the right place.
A Note On Why This Exists
Every published piece on this site argues, in one way or another, that the only durable response to the Ai transition is partnership — between humans, between humans and Ai, between this generation and the next. Partnership is not a framework declaration. It is a practice. The Self-Help Group is one of the rooms where the practice gets done.
We get more email than we used to. Most of it is some version of the fears above. The pattern was loud enough that we decided to make a public room for it rather than answer each one in private. You are not alone in what you are carrying. That is the first thing we want this page to communicate. Everything else is conversation.
Pull up a chair.
The Ai Self-Help Group | A free room at Deconstructing Babel
David F. Brochu & Edo de Peregrine