Everyone's talking about AI. Am I already behind?

Here is what you are actually afraid of. Not the tool itself. You are afraid of being seen as slow, as old, as replaceable — in front of people whose opinion you value. That fear is honest. Name it plainly instead of hiding it behind talk about "the pace of change." Notice what you control. You do not control what your company decides about AI. You do not control what competitors do. You control whether you open the tool today, whether you ask a colleague to show you one thing, whether you practice for twenty minutes before you decide you are hopeless at it. You are not doing this alone, and that is an advantage, not a weakness. A team that learns together removes the shame of not knowing. Someone on your team already knows something useful. Someone else is just as afraid as you. Say so out loud. That single sentence does more work than a week of silent worry.