This week at my local business group, a clinical psychologist asked me a question I've been chewing on ever since: her feed keeps serving her anti-AI content, saying it's dangerous, it uses too much water, it's going to ruin everything, and she wanted to know how I deal with that.

(Quick context for anyone new here: EverBot started as a robot entertainment company, a story involving a Vegas AI conference, my husband, and a humanoid robot that punched him in the back. I told the full version in my VoyageDenver interview. The short version: every robot demo ended in questions, because people are skeptical of AI and want to understand it. So we became an education company, and that pivot is the whole reason I can answer what comes next.)

Here's the honest answer I gave her, and the even more honest part I'll admit here.

Every new thing comes with pros and cons. Every single one.

Every revolution, every new technology, every new experience humans have ever had arrived with two crowds: the ones who saw opportunity and the ones who saw the end of the world. The industrial revolution scared people badly. Jobs vanished, ways of life changed. It also created work, growth, and possibilities nobody standing at the start of it could have imagined. Both things were true at once. They always are.

AI is the same, with one difference: the argument used to happen in town halls and newspapers. Now it's delivered to your face all day, algorithmically, by a feed that has learned exactly which posts make you stop scrolling. The fear isn't new. The volume is.

AI is here. It's not going away. It's only getting more powerful.

That's not a sales pitch. It's just the situation. And once you accept it, the question stops being "is AI good or bad?" and becomes "how do I navigate it?"

A few things I tell everyone:

Read between the lines. When a company announces massive layoffs "because of AI," be skeptical. AI can't stand on its own yet. You still need humans in the loop. Some of those headlines are AI as the reason; plenty are AI as the excuse.

Use it with your brain switched on. AI is not 100% accurate. It can hallucinate, meaning it can confidently make things up. Used carelessly, things go wrong fast. Used with verification, boundaries, and your own judgment, it's the most capable assistant you've ever had.

The energy question deserves a real answer, so here's what's actually happening.

When the energy concern came up at the meeting, I mentioned I'd seen that Texas was pushing back on data centers, that there were discussions about the strain reaching residential power, and that there were plans to put solar power in space. I went and checked all three afterward, because that's the habit I teach. Here's what the record actually shows.

The strain is real. Texas is the center of the American data center boom, and its grid operator, ERCOT, forecasts that peak demand could more than quadruple in the coming years, driven largely by data centers. Texas officials have said residential ratepayers and small businesses are feeling the burden of that growth, so the worry about our home electricity isn't paranoia. It's on the record.

The pushback is real too, but it's more specific than "Texas doesn't want data centers." Developers canceled at least 20 Texas data center projects in early 2026 because of local opposition, and Governor Abbott has called for restrictions in rural communities, saying data centers must "bring their own money, bring their own power, reuse their own water, and do it in a way that reduces the cost of electricity for residents". At the same time, ERCOT just streamlined the process for connecting new data centers to the grid. So the state is still building; it's just being forced to build on better terms. That's not the system failing. That's the system doing its job.

And the solutions are further along than most people's feeds would suggest. A startup called Overview Energy signed an agreement to beam up to a gigawatt of space-based solar power to Meta's data centers, the first orbital data center nodes launched in January 2026, and SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others have filed plans for entire constellations of orbital computing. The reason is exactly what I said at the meeting: in orbit, the sun never sets.

One honest note: the psychologist's question also mentioned water, and I'll tell you what I told the group about everything else, which is don't take my word on things I haven't dug into yet. The water side of data centers is on my research list, and when I understand it properly I'll write about it. That's how this should work.

New things bring real problems and real answers, usually at the same time. Being informed about the concerns is not the same as opting out of the technology.

Now the confession

When I see those doom posts, I don't just shrug them off. I run an AI education company, and there are days I look at how fast this is moving and wonder: is my own company safe? Is this even worthwhile?

And then I remind myself why the answer is yes.

Because there is so much still to learn and understand, and we are all learning it at the same time. Nobody has this figured out. Not the companies building it, not the influencers hyping it, not the skeptics dooming it, and not me. The technology will keep changing. The need to understand it will only grow. Teaching people how to think about AI, use it wisely, and stay ahead of it isn't a business that AI makes obsolete. It's the business AI makes necessary.

What people actually need isn't another opinion. It's a person.

Here's what that conversation this week really showed me. Half of what I do is AI education: clubs for kids, workshops for adults, consulting for business owners. The other half is something I don't see anyone else offering: being the person people can bring their AI ideas and their AI fears to. An AI counselor, almost. Someone who won't hype you, won't doom you, and won't make you feel behind for asking the basic question.

Kids, parents, retirees, business owners. Every age and every stage, the need is the same: not more content about AI, but a real conversation with someone who will listen first and translate second.

That's the company I want EverBot to be. The fear is normal. The questions are the point. Bring me both.

Want to start with the practical side? On Wednesday, July 15, I'm running Real AI for Real Life: Get Hours Back Every Week, a one-hour virtual workshop on everyday AI for meals, calendars, trips, and making AI actually yours. $5, live on Zoom, no tech background needed, and every attendee gets the tips and tricks by email afterward. Grab a ticket on Eventbrite or email info@everbot.tech.