I need to talk about the urgency machine for a minute.
You know the one. The reels, the emails, the infographics that show up right when you're feeling good about your progress and quietly remind you that you're already too late. "AI is changing everything and if you're not using it this way right now you are falling behind." The messaging is designed to make you feel desperate, not curious. Panicked, not interested. Ready to buy something, not ready to learn something.
I want to offer you a different perspective.
A writer I follow recently shared an infographic that stopped me in my tracks. It estimated that if the world had only 1,000 people, 840 of them have never used AI at all. Another 139 have only used the free version of ChatGPT. Only 21 people out of 1,000 are actively using paid AI tools to do real work.
If that data is even directionally accurate, and I believe it is, then anyone reading this newsletter is already in the top fraction of a percent of people engaging seriously with these tools. You are not behind. You are genuinely ahead.
I have been using AI for about a year now. It didn't start with a grand business plan or a course I paid too much for. It started with a conversation.
I was spinning on ideas about digital products and I realized I could type my thoughts into an AI tool and get actual feedback instead of just watching the same ideas circle my brain for the hundredth time. That was it. That was the moment. From there it spread into my teaching, then recipes, then clothing ideas. One quiet conversation became a whole new way of thinking through problems. It had a domino effect that eventually led to this newsletter, this experiment, and eleven consecutive Wednesdays of showing up.
Nobody sold me urgency. I just got curious.
This week I got curious about something new. I discovered Kittl, a design platform that lets you run the same prompt through four different AI image generators side by side. Same prompt, four completely different outputs. As someone who lives in Ideogram I assumed I already knew what I would get. I was wrong.
The four tools produced wildly different results in style, tone, and quality. And the one that surprised me most was ChatGPT. I have never seriously considered ChatGPT as an image creation tool. But when I ran my Pinterest pin prompt through it the result was clean, on brand, readable, and honestly my favorite of the four. The teal background was right, the sticker text style was right, the coffee cup had a little heart on it. It looked like something I would have spent twenty minutes perfecting in Ideogram and it came out right on the first try.
I learned something genuinely useful this week and I was not in a hurry when I learned it. I was just playing.
That is the relationship I want you to have with AI. Not desperate. Not panicked. Not convinced you are already too late. Curious. Experimental. Willing to try something just to see what happens.
One more thing worth mentioning this week. I am technically retiring from public school teaching very soon after thirty years in large schools with large class sizes and the particular kind of exhaustion that comes with both. I am 54 and absolutely not ready for the rocking chair. In August I start at a smaller private school, smaller classes, four day work week, and what I hope is the perfect transition into whatever comes next.
The AI Income Experiment gets a lot more breathing room this summer. I have plans and I am looking forward to telling you about them.
For now though, close whatever tab is making you feel behind. Open a free AI tool. Type one thing you have been thinking about and see what comes back.
That is how it starts for most of us. Not with urgency. With a conversation.
The AI assist this week: Kittl for comparative AI image generation across four platforms. ChatGPT image generation, which I am now reconsidering as a serious tool.
The honest take: The urgency marketing around AI is designed to sell you something. Your genuine curiosity is the thing that will actually build something. Those are not the same and it is worth knowing the difference.
See you next Wednesday. — Kelly
P.S. Want to see exactly how I use AI tools to build my online business one experiment at a time? Subscribe to The AI Income Experiment and get my free NotebookLM Quick Start guide as a welcome gift. Five prompts, real examples, no fluff. Subscribe free here.