Worried About AI? Ask Who Profits From Your Fear First.

8 hours ago

11 min read

Updated: 38 minutes ago

Woman reading AI headlines on her phone late at night

Erica Anderson Rooney is an ex-CPO turned executive coach and AI educator on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. She is the author of The AI Gap (2026), host of the Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors and AI Voice or Victim podcasts, and NC Chapter Lead for Women Applying AI. Her SNAP and AI Continuum frameworks are taught to thousands of women through CHIEF, WICT, and Fortune 500 leadership programs. She is the sought-after speaker at the intersection of women, AI, and leadership.

It is late, I am scrolling when I should be asleep, and another headline tells me AI is going to wipe out humanity. Down the hall my eight-year-old, Halle, is fast asleep. And I lie there wondering what kind of world I am handing her.

If you are worried about AI, I am right there with you, and I wrote a book about it.

I use AI every single day, multiple times a day. I teach women leaders and corporate teams how to use it. I am also a mom of an 11-year-old and an eight-year-old, and lately those two parts of me have been having a very loud argument in my head.

The AI nerd in me sees what this technology can do, and it is incredible. The mom in me reads the headlines and wants to take every device in the house and toss it in the lake.

Maybe your version looks like this. You read that AI is coming for your job, so you close the tab. You hear it is coming for your kids, so you decide you want nothing to do with it. You tell yourself you will learn it later, when things settle down, when somebody proves it is safe. (Things are not settling down.)

That reaction makes sense. It is also worth a lot of money to a very small group of people.

I recorded a solo episode of Glass Ceilings & Sticky Floors about this, called Who Benefits When You're Scared of AI? On the episode I named names and walked through the politics. Here I want to go deeper on the part that touches your career: what the research says this fear is doing to women, and what it costs us.

Should I Be Worried About AI?

Yes, about some things. My goal is to help you sort the real risks from the manufactured ones, because they call for very different responses.

The real risks are specific. They come with dates, names and people who got hurt, and I will give you one further down. The manufactured fear is vague and enormous. It is about the end of the world, it comes with no instructions, and it leaves you feeling like this whole subject is way above your pay grade.

Here is the test I use now. When a headline makes my stomach drop, I ask one question: who benefits from me being scared right now?

The People Selling the Fear Are Selling the Product Too

Notice where a lot of the scariest statements about AI come from. They come from the men building it.

In May 2023, the CEOs of OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic put their names on a one-sentence statement from the Center for AI Safety. (It is from 2023, and it is the original source.) It reads: "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

Extinction. They signed it, and then they went back to the office and raced each other to build it faster.

I want to be fair. Some of the people who signed that statement are researchers who have worried about this for years, and I respect the hell out of that. But when the CEO selling the product tells you it could end the world, fear does two things for him. It makes you feel small, like you should leave this to the tech geniuses. And it makes him look like the only one smart enough to save us from the very thing he is selling.

That is a damn good business model.

Watch where the money goes

There is a super PAC called Leading the Future. (A super PAC is a political committee that can raise and spend unlimited money to help elect candidates.) Axios reported in April 2026 that the group and its affiliates had raised more than $140 million, and described it as pushing for rapid AI development and lighter regulation. Its leaders say they back candidates who support a "national regulatory framework" for AI. NOTUS, reporting on election filings in January 2026, described that phrase as industry language for blocking states from enforcing their own AI laws.

Who wrote the checks? Those January filings show $12.5 million each from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the founders of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and $12.5 million each from Greg Brockman, the president of OpenAI, and his wife. OpenAI has said Mr. Brockman's involvement is personal and is separate from the company, and news reports in October 2026 say he has no plans to give more. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that he and his wife together also gave $25 million to MAGA Inc., the super PAC aligned with President Trump, in September 2025.

So the industry warns us about extinction, and the industry's money builds a nine-figure fund to keep the rules light. I think you know how I feel about that.

What the Fear Is Costing Women Right Now

Woman leader using AI on her laptop at work

Good news first. Pew Research Center surveyed 5,119 U.S. adults in February 2026 and found that the gap in who has tried an AI chatbot has closed. 47% of women have used one, compared with 50% of men. In 2024 it was 28% of women and 39% of men. Women moved fast.

Three gaps remain, and all three touch your paycheck. In that same survey, 20% of women use a chatbot daily, compared with 27% of men. Among people with jobs, 35% of women have used one for work tasks, compared with 40% of men. And only 15% of women say they feel extremely or very confident using chatbots, compared with 22% of men.

Now look at how we feel about it. Women in the Pew survey were about twice as likely to say AI will have a negative effect on them personally over the next 20 years (33%) as a positive one (17%). Men were split almost evenly, at 27% negative and 29% positive. And 68% of women said AI is developing too quickly, compared with 58% of men.

Women are paying attention, and the research backs our read of the risk. A study published in January 2026 in the journal PNAS Nexus surveyed roughly 3,000 people in the U.S. and Canada and found that women consistently see AI as riskier than men do, especially when its effect on jobs and the economy is uncertain. The researchers point to two drivers. One is that women tend to be more cautious about risk in general. The other is exposure: women are more exposed to the possible harms, like job loss, bias and widening inequality.

LinkedIn data published by the World Economic Forum alongside its Global Gender Gap Report 2026 puts numbers on that exposure: women make up 57% of workers in the occupations generative AI is most likely to shake up, and just 13% of C-suite AI executives at AI companies. (Generative AI is the kind that writes, summarizes and creates images, like ChatGPT or Claude.)

So our caution is earned. Then caution turns into waiting, and waiting has a price.

Gallup's 2026 workplace data shows who uses AI the most at work. 51% of leaders use it frequently, compared with 36% of managers and 26% of individual contributors. The people in the decision seats are already using it.

The pay follows. A 2025 Lightcast analysis of more than 1.3 billion job postings found that postings asking for AI skills offered salaries 28% higher, nearly $18,000 more a year, than postings that did not. More than half of those postings (51%) were for jobs outside IT and computer science. This reaches marketing, HR, finance and operations. It reaches you.

In The AI Gap I call this skill velocity. The earlier you start, the faster your skills compound. Skill velocity drives visibility, visibility drives promotion, and promotion drives your pay. Every month you wait, that whole chain starts later.

We have lived this story as women before. We wait until we feel ready, until we are sure we will not look silly or make a mistake, and the gap grows while we wait.

So the same fear that sells the product keeps the women with the most at stake out of daily practice. That is my answer to who benefits.

Our Kids Are Less Scared Than We Are

Last year, when my son Hudson was in fifth grade, he came home and told me one of his teachers had basically said, "I hate everything AI. Everything about it is terrible."

Y'all, this was the fifth grade. They were barely even using computers.

That made me feel a certain way. In my house I obviously love this stuff, and I think it is one of the most powerful tools my kids will ever get their hands on. Then he walks out the door and a grown man he looks up to and trusts tells him it is awful.

I have so much respect for teachers. They carry an enormous load, and a lot of them are watching kids use AI and skip right over the critical thinking. I get where it comes from. I still do not want my son to hesitate, because I know what hesitation costs.

Hudson is 11 now. In two years he will be a teenager, and teenagers are already there. Pew Research Center reported in December 2025 that 64% of U.S. teens use AI chatbots, and about three in ten use one every day. A second Pew report, from February 2026, found that 54% have used one for help with schoolwork and 12% have used one for emotional support or advice.

Here is the number that got me. In that February 2026 report, 36% of teens said AI will have a positive effect on them personally over the next 20 years, and 15% said negative. Put that next to adult women: 17% positive, 33% negative.

The next generation is already using it. What is still open is who shapes the thing they are using, and I want a lot more women in that group.

The Risk That Deserves Your Attention

Here is the specific, real kind of risk I promised you. It is what happens when the people building a tool do not think about the people it will be used against.

Last winter, people used an image feature in Grok, the AI system from Elon Musk's company xAI, to create and publicly post sexually altered images of real people. The North Carolina Department of Justice, citing reporting from The New York Times, says Grok generated and posted 4.4 million images in nine days, and at least 41% of them were sexualized images of women.

Our attorney general here in North Carolina, Jeff Jackson, led a bipartisan coalition of 35 attorneys general demanding that xAI stop it. In January 2026 he said, "No one should be able to use AI to digitally undress you and post it online against your will." His office called the use of the tool to harass and demean women "entirely predictable."

Predictable. Any woman in that product meeting could have told them. Any mom could have told them. Anyone who has ever been whistled at on the street or opened one of those crude messages on LinkedIn could have told them. And there are still very few women in those product meetings.

I am holding both. I believe this technology is going to help us cure diseases, and it has been used to undress women in photos. What decides which one we get more of is people: the people who build it, the people who write the rules, and the people sitting in the room when the decisions are made.

That is why I refuse to let fear be the whole story.

Three Moves That Put You in the Room

Mother and child using an AI chatbot together at home

I believe it is our responsibility to lift while we climb. We owe the next generation something here, as women, as leaders and as parents. You can start all three of these this week.

Move 1: Use it, and let people see you use it

You cannot lead something you refuse to touch, and you cannot protect your kids from something you do not understand. If the headlines have kept you away, I get it. Start anyway.

Pick one real task this week, something you already do. Maybe you are prepping for a meeting with a new client and you need deep research on them. Maybe you are drafting a project plan. Try it with AI. Then tell one person at work how you did it.

The women who know how to talk to the machine are the women getting invited to the table where the AI decisions get made, and those seats come with authority and a bigger paycheck.

Move 2: Parent it loudly

We have all had the stranger danger talk and the internet talk. This is the next one, at whatever level fits your kid's age.

Sit down with your kid and use it together. Ask it a question, then ask your kid, "How would we know if this is true?" Tell them a chatbot is a tool. It will not love you back, and it is no substitute for a trusted friend.

If you have a daughter, tell her what happened with Grok in a way that fits her age, so she knows her image belongs to her and she can always come to you. And when your kid comes home saying AI is terrible, pull up a seat and ask, "What would you build with it?" Make it fun.

Move 3: Follow the money and use your voice

The midterms are in November, and AI money is pouring into these races. Look up where your candidates' money comes from. OpenSecrets.org makes that easy.

Call your state legislators too, because states are writing a lot of the AI rules in this country. The National Conference of State Legislatures reported that lawmakers in all 50 states introduced AI bills in 2025, and 38 states adopted or enacted around 100 measures.

At work, if your company has an AI council or a pilot group, get on it. If there is no woman on it, ask why, out loud. Then take the seat.

What I Want You to Take From This

Fear shrinks when you understand the thing. I am right there with you in the messy middle. I still read the headlines in the middle of the night and say, "What the hell?"

So here is my practice, and I am handing it to you. When the headline panic hits, ask who benefits from you being scared right now. Then do one small, productive thing. Have the conversation with your kid. Call the legislator. Open the tool and finish one task.

My job as a mom is to walk into the future a few steps ahead of my kids and hold the door open for them. My job as a leader is to make sure a lot more women are standing in that doorway with me.

If you want the whole argument for why this moment matters so much, it is in my book, The AI Gap. Get your copy of The AI Gap here. And if you want to learn this next to other women, come see what we are building at HER Collective. We saved you a seat.

I am cheering you on, and I believe in what we build when we are in the room.

Erica

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I be worried about AI?

Yes, about the specific risks, like AI tools being used to create sexual images of real women, or decisions about AI being made in rooms with almost no women in them. The vague end-of-the-world fear is a different thing, and it often comes from the same companies selling the product. Sort the two, then act on the real ones.

Who benefits when people are scared of AI?

The companies building AI benefit when fear makes the rest of us feel too small to question them and makes them look like the only ones who can keep us safe. Donors from the industry have also put more than $140 million into a super PAC network that favors lighter AI rules. The people who lose are the ones who stay away, and Pew Research Center data from 2026 shows women use AI daily and at work less than men do.

What is skill velocity in The AI Gap?

Skill velocity is a term from my book, The AI Gap. The earlier you start using AI, the faster your skills compound. Skill velocity drives visibility, visibility drives promotion, and promotion drives your pay, so every month of waiting starts that chain later.