“I’m afraid of AI.”

I hear that sometimes. And I’m not saying I know better, but I’m genuinely surprised.

Because I ask what exactly they’re afraid of, and the answers usually sound like:
privacy, data, control, “what will they do with it”

Something doesn’t add up.

Because if you truly care about the safety of your content and information, then… AI is not where you’ve been giving away the most.

Sorry.

Social media. The old deal we all got used to

Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, LinkedIn, all these platforms repeat the same line:

“Your content is yours.” Technically, yes.

But at the same time, each of them requires a broad license: worldwide, non exclusive, royalty free, transferable, with the right to sublicense, including the right to modify, distribute, translate, and create derivative works.

You pay to remove ads. You don’t change the licensing rules for your content.

So in practice: you upload photos, describe your life, share knowledge, emotions, your whole story. Often publicly.

For years. For free. Inside a system that lives off people watching and clicking.

And somehow, that doesn’t trigger fear.

AI. A tool that arrived too fast

Most AI tools today work in a fairly straightforward way:
free / consumer accounts: training models on your data
business, enterprise, API: no training on user data by default

This isn’t a secret or a conspiracy. It’s a pretty transparent business model, and like any model, it requires awareness.

But there’s a key difference:
AI doesn’t publish your content
AI doesn’t sell your image to other users
AI doesn’t live off exposing your life

Fear of AI rarely comes down to data itself. More often it’s about losing control, because the tool is new, it speaks human language, and we haven’t had time to domesticate it yet.

And this is where something shows up that people talk about suspiciously little.

While regular users are being scared, corporations do the opposite

While everyday users are being warned about AI, risks, dangers, “better to wait”…

big corporations are doing something completely different.

They’re patenting AI applications at scale.

Not “intelligence.” Not “machine thinking.”

Integrations, orchestration, personalization, concrete industry use cases.

Here are numbers that should make you pause:
over 120,000 granted AI patents
around 30% year over year growth

These aren’t defensive patents. These are patents that:
raise the entry barrier
make cheap alternatives harder
turn innovation into something that’s legally expensive

And suddenly AI stops being “dangerous.” It becomes regulated, patented, licensed.

Fear as the perfect time buffer

From the perspective of big players, this arrangement is almost perfect.

While regular people are afraid, postpone learning, say “it’s not for me yet,”

the market gets time to mature, get divided up, and get legally secured.

No conspiracy theory required. Uncertainty is enough.

Because the later people realize that AI isn’t a toy, that it genuinely cuts creation costs and gives small players massive leverage,

the more of the space will already belong to someone.

The AI user isn’t the problem

The system is afraid of the user who understands AI as infrastructure, who connects tools instead of just playing with prompts, who sees AI as a way to build real value.

That’s why there’s so much talk about fear, ethics, threats…

…and so little about patents, concentration of intellectual property, and barriers to entry.

Context instead of panic

This isn’t a text about “AI being safe and innocent.” It isn’t.

But if you’ve been handing your content to social media for years, publicly and for free, and you’re afraid of talking to AI inside a closed tool,

then the problem isn’t security.

It’s lack of understanding and context.

And fear rarely helps the people who feel it. More often, it buys time for the people quietly writing the rules of the game.