“You’ll get left behind if you don’t learn AI”

Left behind where? We all live in the same world, anyone can pick up AI at any moment, it’s not hard, an idiot can do it (and they do).

If you’re not willing to risk being “left behind”, you won’t be able to spot the next rising trend quickly enough and jump on it, you’ll be too distracted by the current shiny thing.

I read it as "compared to others, in the current context".

If you take some percent longer to finish a some code, because you want that code to maintain some level of "purity", you'll finish slower than others. If his is a creative context, you'll spend more time on boilerplate than interesting stuffs. If this is a profit driven context, you'll make less money, less money for staff. Etc.

> If you’re not willing to risk being “left behind”...

I think this is orthogonal. Some tools increase productivity. Using a tool doesn't blind a component person...they just have an another tool under their belt to use if they personally find it valuable.