Blog by : Zoé Thivet

🌍 This article is also available in French: Trouve un prénom pour un chat gris – Zoé Thivet

I sometimes wonder how AI first entered my colleagues’ lives. What it actually felt like for them to let this new technology into their daily routines. I’m not talking about tools or workflows, but about emotions. We’ve hardly talked about that part together.

My very first prompt was: “Find a name for a grey cat.”

On the homepage of an LLM that would soon become famous, a few sample prompts were suggested so users could try it out. I ran it a couple of times and got suggestions like “Silver,” “Storm,” and “Ash.” Pretty good though nothing extraordinary. I signed up so I could write my own prompts, and that’s when everything began. If I had known what kind of adventure I was stepping into that day…

At first, my use of AI chatbots was purely recreational. It even became a kind of party trick I’d pull out during evenings with friends.

“Write a song about my friend So-and-so, who loves poker, wine tasting, and video games.”
“Write a poem about pizza in the style of Baudelaire.”
“Who’s cooler: me or So-and-so?”

The speed of the responses and their humour fascinated me. The first emotions I felt were simple: fascination and delight.

I don’t remember exactly when I first used AI at work, but I remember the feeling. A quiet, slightly illicit sense of satisfaction. Several of us were probably doing the same thing on our own without saying it out loud: using AI to rephrase a sentence, fix a piece of code, or brainstorm ideas. At the time, it felt like having a secret weapon something small but powerful that helped me get through the day.

That phase didn’t last long. Before long, the masks came off.

“Wow, that email was really diplomatic.”
“Yeah I asked the AI to smooth things over.”

Sometimes it was even funny. Someone known for being blunt suddenly started sending long, nuanced, extremely polite messages in the team chat.

The way people talked about using AI evolved over time. At first, there was a certain pride in it almost a rebellious tone, as if to say: Why would I waste time doing that boring stuff myself?

Gradually, though, another feeling appeared: doubt. A kind of fragility, sometimes even embarrassment. As if the unspoken message had become: Yes, I could have done it myself… but I didn’t have time, and it’s not that easy, so I took the shortcut again.

I started noticing the same feeling in myself. When someone walks behind me and can see my screen, I’d rather they see me typing code in my IDE than writing a prompt. This instinct is one of the many expressions of what people now call AI shaming.

It’s a strange reflex: wanting to hide a practice that actually improves our performance. Do Asterix or Geralt of Rivia hide when they drink their magic potion?

At the same time, the opposite feeling sometimes appears. Occasionally I feel a small sense of pride when I write a long piece of text without any help from AI. And almost immediately afterward, I question that pride. What really matters: protecting my sense of self, or the final result?

Welcome to life between a rock and a hard place.

Suspicion spreads as well. How many times have I read a text and run it through an AI detection tool? And when the verdict comes back “AI detection: 100%” the discomfort grows.

The words we write are already a refined version of our thoughts. AI adds another layer of refinement. What gets lost along the way?

Even stranger is the feeling that, after reading so many AI-generated texts, my own writing style might be changing. Recently I had the odd idea of running an AI detector on a text I had just written myself. The result was unsettling: the tool estimated that at least half of it had been generated by AI.

The carefree experimentation of those early months now feels far away.

I entered the world of software testing ten years ago with a fairly light technical background, mostly self-taught, and it took me several years to build real confidence in my work. Now AI is shaking that confidence again like standing in a hall of distorted mirrors reflecting my professional identity back at me.

Meanwhile, AI-powered tools keep appearing everywhere. Training programs multiply. Conferences are flooded with AI sessions. My LinkedIn feed is overflowing with posts about AI.

“76 NEW prompts to BOOST your PRODUCTIVITY.”
“340 ESSENTIAL tools so you don’t MISS the AI REVOLUTION.”
“Master the basics of AI with our 1,800-page white paper.”

My feed feels saturated. I try to carve out time to stay informed and keep learning, but the unease grows as the line blurs between marketing hype and genuine skill development.

I feel that familiar FOMO the fear of missing out. The anxiety that I might overlook something crucial for my career. At the same time, I feel strangely stuck. With so much information everywhere, what should my next step actually be?

I don’t have the answer. I don’t have a clear roadmap either, and I admit I miss that.

For now, I focus on my day-to-day work. AI is a tool I use regularly to deliver what my clients need. It helps me move faster, understand things more clearly, and strengthen my skills.

Still, all those emotions keep surfacing some pleasant, others less so. And maybe, while reading this, you recognized parts of your own experience.

These emotions are experienced individually. But should it really be up to each of us to deal with them alone?

Maybe it’s time we started talking about them.