I recently had a conversation with my daughter. She’s Gen Z, thoughtful, and very skeptical of AI. Not in a casual way, but deeply, ethically opposed. Her concerns weren’t about job security or whether AI will replace humans. They were about the environmental cost, the socioeconomic impact, and the broader question of whether we’re creating something powerful without fully accounting for the consequences. I didn’t convince her. But the conversation stuck with me.

A lot of people I used to know from the agile community are now deeply involved in AI work. Myself included. At first glance, that might look like trend-hopping. But to me, it makes perfect sense. If you take the how out of the equation, the goal hasn’t really changed. We’re still trying to answer the same fundamental question: How do we shorten the time between sensing a real customer need and delivering something valuable in response?

There’s a quiet feeling I hear from professionals again and again. It doesn’t usually come out directly. It shows up as a joke. Or a shrug. Or a half-confident, half-uneasy “Yeah, we’re using AI.” But underneath it is something else: “I feel like I’m always playing catch-up.”