I almost quit YouTube....

Okay, I gotta be honest. AI is really starting to stress me out. Like, a lot. So much so that I almost quit YouTube. Legit. It's been a lot recently. Like, you may have seen this article last week. It went viral, 80 million views, and it's telling us about how all of our jobs are going to disappear. I know, we've heard it before, but this one kind of hit different because everyone was agreeing with it. And I'm not immune to this. Like, I wake up, I read this thing, and I'm instantly filled with anxiety. Anyone else? Like, I know a lot of you probably are feeling the same way, which is why I'm making this video. I want to talk about it. Like, what's up with our industry right now? What is happening to tech workers is coming for everyone else. I've been feeling this way for a long time, and reading this article, which we'll talk about later, it was like reading my thoughts. And what it was saying was nothing new. Like, everyone's already kind of thinking this. It's just that it was put on paper in a way that everyone's kind of noticed, and it became a catalyst for a lot of conversations. So this video is kind of like, what am I doing in response to all this? All this AI stuff, all this fear. What should you be doing? What should we be doing? Let's talk about that. I was going to quit, but then I decided that I'm not going to bury my head in the sand. I don't think you should either. We're going to own this. That's my attitude now. But why am I making this video now? And why am I in Japan right now? Because that's where I am. Get your coffee ready. So I'm in Japan for three months. It's kind of a sabbatical right now, because again, I almost quit YouTube, and AI was really stressing me out. The burnout with AI has been hitting me really, really hard. Everything is moving really fast, and it's a little paralyzing. And it's honestly why I haven't been publishing as much on YouTube. I've been kind of absent, and I feel bad about that, because I love making videos, and I love being involved with you guys and having community. And it sucks. And part of that is I'm thinking, what content do I even make anymore? Is AI replacing everything? Do I still teach Linux? And what do I tell my audience about all this stuff if I don't even myself have it figured out? So I left. I just was like, you know, I need to go somewhere. So I'm in Japan, just hoping to get some separation and clarity for what's happening. I got this quote from that show, Ted Lasso. He said, gave me the distance I needed to see what was really going on. And that's kind of what I'm doing with this trip. But it followed me here. The anxiety, the AI stress, the endless onslaught of AI news, OpenClaw, the Schumer article, model releases. And the last few weeks have been the most intense I've ever seen it. Everyone's freaking out. Everyone's waking up. Everyone's realizing that AI is kind of a thing and it can actually do stuff. The stress honestly got so much worse, not better. And I'm here in Okinawa, Japan with my family. And I can't even get peace because I'm so distracted by AI. And I feel like everything's moving so fast and I can't stop or I'll get left behind. And I'm driving myself crazy. Like I'm talking to AI while shopping at konbinis. I'm voice dictating while exploring caves, reading my ex feed while eating soba. I can't stop. And it's not that I don't want to, it's like I feel like I can't, like I'm going to lose something. I'll get too left behind. I can't be the only one feeling this way. Like, do you guys feel this way? I feel crazy. Coffee break. And it's honestly the strangest feeling in the world, right? Because I'm honestly so excited about all of this. It's so fun. There are so many advances every day. So many cool things to play with. If you're a techie, this is like a drug addiction, dopamine hit after dopamine hit. And just when I finished playing with one thing, another thing comes out and it does that same thing better. And the problem is what makes me so good at tech. Just like the curiosity and the genuine love of technology has become my worst enemy when it comes to AI. I'm constantly tinkering. It's like a TikTok feed of all this new tech stuff to try. It's not healthy. And when I do finally come up for air to look around after I'm done playing, I see everyone else doing cool stuff. And I assume I'm super behind. And then I start to wonder like, what does the future hold for me, for my job, for my audience? Is all this stuff I'm playing with going to replace what I love doing? It's crazy exciting, but insanely overwhelming. So I want to say this. It's okay to feel that way. Like if you're feeling this way therapy right now, and you know what? It's okay to say you hate AI. I'm going to say it right now. I kind of hate AI sometimes it's a textbook love and hate situation. But if I'm being honest, I was a better technologist, a better creator, a better human without AI. And I'm trying to find that balance right now, because honestly, I want to stop using AI. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to be different. I'm going to stop using AI altogether. But then I'm like, I can't do that. This is the new stuff. This is the new thing. Change isn't coming. I mean, change is here, but what does that mean? Like what does change mean? Is that Schumer article accurate? Are our jobs in danger? The last few weeks have revealed a lot, but let's grab another cup of coffee and break this down. I'm going to get a refill or at least heat this up. It was getting cold. So yeah, the last few weeks have hit different. Here's what happened and why everyone is freaking out, including me. First was Clawdbot, Moltbot, OpenClaw. This thing released and it's amazing. And it revealed to a lot of people what AI can actually do. It's not a new model or anything. It's just a harness that unlocks a ton of ideas. Now I am going to have videos coming out on this. I just didn't make any videos on it because it happened right when I'm having this midlife AI crisis and I'm trying to go to Japan and chill out. And it's like, here is the most amazing life-changing tool in the last five minutes. Try it. But it is amazing. And it essentially gives us the ability to talk to our AI through any channel, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack, and kind of treat them like employees. It's cool. What's not cool is if you follow anything related to OpenClaw on X, that's your entire feed. Your feed is now OpenClaw and what everyone's doing with it. And you feel behind all the time. So OpenClaw was cool and terrifying, but then this article came out from Matt Schumer. He's a CEO of some AI company. It goes crazy viral. I wake up one morning in Japan and I'm like, I hate this. Like, why am I reading this right now? Couldn't help it. Everyone's posting. Everyone posted it. I got texts about it. And again, this is not new. Like we've heard stuff like this before, but this one hit because it resonated with how I think, how I was already feeling, just stuffing it down. He confessed this. I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. And he compared this moment to not like a light switch, more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest. I feel bad. And he said this too. If your job happens on a screen, then AI is coming for significant parts of it. The timeline isn't someday. It's already started. Now again, it's not that he's just saying this stuff and I'm believing it blind. It's that everyone was going, yeah, this is true. Retweet. Yes. Send this to your family. Warn them. Everyone needs to wake up. This is a wake-up call. Everyone's saying this. Now he did end up kind of walking some things back in an interview. Also, he wrote this with AI, which seems weird. We'll talk about that later, but it's still heavy stuff. But that wasn't all that happened in the last couple of weeks. It's killing me. There was a UC Berkeley study. 62% of AI workers report burnout, anxiety, decision paralysis by month six. Yeah, I get that. Or this, AI doesn't reduce work. It intensifies it. That, yeah, I feel that. And then there were 30,700 tech layoffs in six weeks of 2026. Amazon alone accounted for 16,000. Salesforce cut their force down from 9,000 to 5,000. Entry-level job postings are down 15 to 25%. That first rung on ladder is disappearing. The anthropic CEO said 50% of entry-level white collar jobs eliminated in one to five years. Industry insiders think he's too conservative. So if you weren't stressed out before, I'm sorry, but it's reality. Like it's what people are saying or is it? Because here's the thing. Not everyone agrees with this. And after thinking about it for a while, I actually believe something different. I think something else is going to happen. Hey, I'm in Japan right now. I've got proof. Japan stuff. And I'm sitting on the floor. Now you know what's not in Japan? My data center, my racks full of networking equipment and my NAS, my Mac studio cluster, my Raspberry Pis, my everything is not here with me. Now I can't have that. I got to access my stuff all the time from anywhere. But watch this. With one little button click, boom. It's like I never left home. I can access everything with TwinGate, the sponsor of this video. TwinGate is kind of like VPN, but it's not. VPN is the old way of doing things. And we don't do things the old way. We do things the new way. This is zero trust network access that allows me to access all my stuff from anywhere in the world. But just who I say has access. Now let me tell you a bit about my setup. Can we nerd out a bit? I'm in good company, right? So back in my home base, my data center, I actually have two TwinGate connectors. It takes about three seconds to install these guys. In fact, if you want to set up TwinGate, it's free. You get five free users. All you have to do is install a connector inside your network, and that can be installed on a Raspberry Pi, laptop, a spare Linux server. It doesn't matter. And suddenly you have access. Now here's my favorite thing. When I install a connector, it doesn't instantly allow everyone to access all the stuff when they log into TwinGate. No, no, no, no, no. It's denied by default. Zero trust. Meaning when I set up access to my server, first I have to specifically say we're allowing access to the server. I have to specify who, the group, the machine. I can specify ports. I can do time-based access. I can have it expire. I can say if they have a Windows PC without any kind of antivirus, shut them down. Don't let them in. Now, if you're like me and you love IT and tech and you're a home labber, TwinGate's a no-brainer. You don't have to abandon your VPN just yet. Put it to the side, try TwinGate, and then throw your VPN away because you'll see. But if you're a business, TwinGate just works. And I do use TwinGate for my business. I use it every single day to access my stuff through my laptop, through my phone. My open-claw agents use it to access my stuff back home. Seriously, try out TwinGate. And thank you to TwinGate for sponsoring this video and sponsoring a lot of my videos. They've been a long-term partner for a, well, a long time, and I'm proud to have them as a sponsor. So check that link in the description or go to this link right here. I have a creepy AI voice saying it right now because I always forget what it is. ntck.co slash TwinGate in Japan. Now back to the video. It's getting dark here. I had to move my light and I spilled coffee everywhere. Anyways, here we are again. Okay. So before I tell you what I think about AI or where it's going and what I'm going to do about it, let's talk about what's real. This article, this Matt Schumer guy put out, something big is happening. Is there any truth to it? A lot of people believe there is because it went viral. Everyone's sharing it. Everyone's agreeing with it. And I think the reason it went viral is because this article is speaking to a fear that a lot of us have. Not necessarily truth, fear. And fear goes pretty viral. And that's, you know, when I read this, I'm like, Oh yeah, of course I've been having this, this thought, this feeling in the pit of my stomach. I know it. It's true. It's there. And everyone's sharing it. Everyone agrees, but there's another side to it, right? For example, this guy, when it went viral, of course, everyone's like, Hey, we got to interview you. So as soon as he was interviewed by CNBC, he started walking some things back. And I want to be very clear about this. The article wasn't meant to scare people in this way. And if I had known how viral this was going to go, I would have thought about certain parts and rewritten some of the parts for sure. Because it was doom and gloom. It was, it was over the top. I think Gary Marcus, NYU professor called it weaponized hype. No data supporting flawless AI coding hallucinations still common. And what's funny is Schumer used AI to help him write this, which is not very surprising, but when you phrase it as the guy warning about AI used AI to write the warning and the fact that he fed it articles, he agreed with then how to interview him and then produce this thing that scared everyone. It's, it's worth thinking about. There's a fortune article rebuttal. Coding has compilers and unit tests to verify a law of medicine finance way harder to automate subjective quality. There's also a historical pattern. Every previous tech revolution overestimated the speed of economic transformation. Every single one. 95% of organizations see no measurable ROI from AI, not a guaranteed steamroller. It's chaos. The Yale budget lab said our data suggests AI labor displacement remains largely speculative. Workers in AI jobs has stayed flat since Chad, UBT organization friction's also real. Someone has to sign off, retrain staff, change compliance, navigate liability years, not months. But the reality is that article could come true. It could be real. It also couldn't. The truth is nobody knows everyone's just guessing, but here's what I think. And this is where I think it lands differently. I don't care if AI takes our jobs in two years or 10 years, because there's something happening right now. The anxiety, the burnout, the feeling like you're always behind that's happening today to me, to you. That's not speculative. That's real. That's right now. And if you're like me, you kind of live both sides of AI. You see it's crazy power. I'm often just like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe you can do that on the other side. I'm also yelling at it and getting super mad because it does mess up. So let me tell you where I'm actually at. I'm going to try and So you may have noticed that I did not make a video on OpenClaw. Many of you were asking about it. This is like a biggest AI news that's happened in a long time. And I agree. It's pretty transformative what it does. And I am going to make videos on it coming soon. But when it came out, I tried it. I used it, but I just couldn't make a video on it. I just couldn't do it. Like I thought it was cool. I thought it was amazing, but I was tired. There's too much. There's too many things I got to try. There's too many things I'm learning. I just froze. I was paralyzed. And I hate that. Like I, I, I hate AI. I'm saying it right now. I hate it, but I love it. And I think part of it is that I'm seeing AI take away some things that I genuinely love, like seeing parts of what we do as it people slowly disappear. Kind of like, I'm not really sure. Like right now, as I'm using AI, I know that me knowing how to use Linux and Mac OS, knowing a bit of coding and hacking and security and networking, that's helping me do a ton of the cliff. But will that change? I don't think so. I had this thought as I was flying from Tokyo to Okinawa, it was on a flight that had no wifi. So I couldn't talk to my AI. So I had to sit there and just use my brain and think for three hours. And it was great actually. But I had this thought and I'm getting kind of to a point in the video where I'm just trying to get out raw thoughts and have a conversation with you. You're going to have to learn AI. Like we have to learn it. We have to learn how to use it and become good at it, become efficient. And everyone's going to be AI, everybody, every single person. So when it comes to the job market and what makes you valuable, it's going to be what you're capable of if the AI fails or if the AI needs guidance. So think about network engineering. If the AI goes offline or hiccups or something, you need to know what's going on. You need to be aware. And if you know more than other people who also come to the interview with an AI agent, you're probably going to get the job. So right now, learning these skills, learning IT skills is still one of the most valuable things we can do because it makes us better with AI. So that was like a little free tidbit. I'm going to put that to the side here. Let me know in the comments below if you agree with that or not. But I want to get to this one point here. And that's that I suck at AI, which is kind of funny with my point I just made. I'm not good at it. I'm not good at AI tooling. I'm not good at creating AI things. And don't get me wrong. Like I can set up all this stuff. I can set up AI. I can install exo labs. I can do clustering. I can train AI models, but doing the actual designing of systems with AI to make it do really cool things, building workflows. I feel like an idiot. I feel really dumb. And that's because I see people who do it well, like Daniel Miesler. I'll watch him create AI things and I'm just flabbergasted. I'm just thankful that he makes stuff I can use, but I can never do that. I try to create my own workflows in my business. I try to automate everything and I'm not good at it. I feel that. And I just want to be honest about that. Like I'm in the trenches right now and I'm hitting real walls. It kind of sucks. I'm not good at AI, but I love playing with it. There needs to be a t-shirt. So I say that to say, I don't have this figured out. And I want you to know that I'm the guy with 5 million subscribers on YouTube and I'm supposed to be this guru, but I don't, I don't have it figured out. I'm learning along with you. I'm figuring things out as they come out. And I think that's okay. I've always tried to be transparent on this channel about the fact that I'm not an expert. I just happen to love tech so much that I'm persistent with it long enough to learn it well. And then I can actually talk about it well on YouTube. Like if I have one skill, it's teaching, but man, this AI stuff is kicking my butt. But here's what I'm not going to do because I almost did this. I almost quit. I almost quit YouTube because this became overwhelming. It was robbing my joy from a lot of things, the stress of trying to keep up, the stress of trying to be a person that can teach you about these things and kind of lead some of you into this. That became a lot, but I'm not going to quit. And I'm not going to pretend I know it all. I'm just going to come on this camera and make videos, but I'm also not going to pretend that I'm an expert anymore. I'm not going to quit and I'm not going to pretend. So here's what I am changing for this channel for this year. And it's kind of my first moment addressing you here in 2026, which by the way, I don't do enough. I've missed talking with you guys like this. I should do more live streams, but here's what I'm doing with this channel. And I'm going to be as real as specific as I can. So it doesn't sound like some kind of motivational nonsense and let me kind of like backtrack a bit. So I've been doing this channel in a certain way for a while now. I've been like, Hey, you need to learn this right now, which has become a joke because everything is so crazy. Now you need to learn everything right now so often. And I'd show you the tool and tell you, Hey, learn it, use it immediately, or you'll get left behind. I'm done doing that for now. Not because all this new stuff isn't important and you should probably learn it right now in some form or fashion, but that's more of like, I know what I'm talking about right now. I I'm just learning with you. That was kind of me pretending. I have all the answers. I don't right now. I don't think anybody does. So I'm just going to come on the camera and say, look at this thing. I found I'm learning how to use it. Let's figure it out together. I don't know how it all works. I don't know how it's going to affect your job, but it's really cool. Let's learn it together. Let's not get left behind again. One of those things I'm going to do is an open claw series. Um, I've been playing with open claw a lot. In fact, as I've come to Japan and I'm doing things remotely, I'm relying a lot on things like open claw to help me run my business along with my real employees too. Again, I'm not an expert in building AI systems, but I think I've come up with some pretty cool stuff. I want to show you guys like real world scenarios, like an it department, which I set up over the last few days. It's very cool. But I also want to be honest about the tools. Like we don't have to love it all the time. We'd often just be like, Oh, I AI is the best. AI is the greatest. I love AI. No, like let's talk about how this tool does a lot of stuff, but I hate it. I prefer to do things myself. And we can be honest about that. I like what Vishal Misra from Columbia said. He said, when the camera was invented, portrait painters had every reason to panic. The camera didn't kill painting. It liberated it. I mean, I don't know if what we do is art and it feels like it sometimes. And Eric Markowitz said, we are not our tools. We never have been. So here's my promise to you. I am going to learn this stuff with you. I'm going to be honest with you when it overwhelms me, when I'm like, ah, not going to be silent. At least I'll try not to be. That's my default is to go silent when I'm overwhelmed or stressed. And that's when you see our YouTube content become less frequent. I'm going to tell you when something's cool. And then also when something sucks and we're going to figure this stuff out together. I would love for you to come along this journey with me. And I'm, you know, I'm mainly focusing on people who are like me where we're technologists, we, um, we're network engineers or want to become network engineers, or we love hacking and cybersecurity and all that stuff. I know that's my core audience. That's you. I'm talking to you and I'm not going to come at it as like, Hey, I'm an AI guru. Follow me. No, again, we're going to be in the same boat together. We're learning together. We're just trying to figure out all this stuff and how not to lose our mind and also our soul to AI. So this was a weird and different video. I know, but I felt like I needed to get on the camera. I talked about this because it's been something I've been feeling over the past, maybe years with how AI has been progressing. I kind of see, or I kind of saw where AI was going. I wasn't quite sure. And then with the last few weeks, I'm like, Oh, okay. This is happening really, really fast. And everyone's saying it is not just me thinking it, but everyone's kind of voicing what I'm thinking. That was a lot, but regardless, we're it people. And we, we learn the latest stuff. Like we, we come at it and we figure out how to use it. And it's not the tools that have ever defined us. I love that quote. It's they never have been, it's been our curiosity. It's been our tenacity. It's been our love for our passion. And we're going to keep that. We're not going to have our heads in the sand. We're and my phrase this year for me personally, with how I'm going to approach most things in my life, including this YouTube channel and AI and our it industry is relentless optimism. No matter what comes like, dude, it's going to work out. It's going to be awesome. So join me in this. If you haven't already subscribed and if you have any ideas for how we can start working on this together, figuring things out let me know, comment below. Also I'm in Japan, so I'm definitely going to be making some content around being in Japan. I'm a nerd, so I'm going to gravitate towards nerdy things, technical things, and I'm just going to nerd out on all kinds of stuff. And I would love to bring you along that journey with me. Let me know what you want to see in Japan from like a fellow nerd perspective. I would love to hear that and keep an eye out for the open claw series. I should be talking with the creator of open claw fairly soon. Anyways, that's all I got guys. Happy 2026. It's a bit belated to say that, but this year is going to be awesome. That's all I I'll catch you guys next time. Hey, you made it to the end of the video. If you're new here, I like to pray for you, my audience. I believe in the power of prayer. It's okay if you don't, but I would love for you to sit here and just let me pray over you. It's going to be weird because yeah, but I want to do it and feel free to click off. That's why I put it at the end of my videos. Let's do this. 1, 2, 3, pray. Father God, thank you so much for this moment in time and history where it's a little stressful, a lot stressful, but you're not surprised by anything. And I ask in your name, God, that you would give all of us right now, peace with what's happening with our industry, that you would give us direction and that you would turn any stress or anxiety that we're feeling, that you would turn that into excitement and tenacity and opportunities for growth. And I pray for this person on the other side of this camera, the screen right now, as they're watching this video, that you would perform a mighty work in their lives, that as they're getting ready to launch their career, they're changing jobs, or they're just trying to maintain the one they have, that you would give them great courage in what and where they're at, that you would give them a fire to keep going, that you would give them a path forward that they can march forward in. I pray this blessing with them as they are preparing their lives or trying to maintain the one they have, just give them what they need. Bless their families, bless their livelihoods, bless their careers, just bless everything, God. Bless this year. Let their goals they have for this year be met. Go before them and make their path straight. I pray for this community, the people that we have here, let us learn and grow together. I pray that with all the stuff with AI, that we would not lose our souls in the process, that we would find what's uniquely human and valuable, and that we'll always maintain that. Valuing people over machines and productivity every time. I ask this in your name, Jesus. Amen. All right, guys. Catch y'all next time. It's getting dark here.