Hybrid FOMO is fear of missing out on the emerging partnership between natural and artificial intelligences.

People fear AI because it may make their skills less valuable.

People also fear avoiding AI because avoidance may make their skills obsolete.

A strange new anxiety has sat down with us in meeting rooms and online forums; it hovers over group chats and appears whenever someone says, “I am using AI for this.” Or “AI has made me so much more productive at that.” These sentences are often casual; their effect is not.

One person finishes a report in half the time. Another builds a presentation overnight. A student produces a polished essay before dinner. A colleague speaks in prompts, agents, copilots, and workflows. Suddenly, the mind begins its private arithmetic: What do they know that I don’t? What are they becoming that I am not? Am I (too) late?

The Rise of Hybrid FOMO

This is hybrid FOMO: the fear of missing out on the emerging partnership between natural and artificial intelligences. Old FOMO was social: Other people were at the party, on the trip, in the photo. Hybrid FOMO is existential. Other people seem to be upgrading their minds, whereas we are bound to be left behind.

Intuitively, FOMO makes sense. As humans, we are exquisitely tuned to status, belonging, and competence. The original psychological research on fear of missing out linked it to unmet needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When we feel less capable, less connected, or less in control, we become more vulnerable to the sense that life is happening elsewhere. A recent three-wave longitudinal study on FOMO and social media described it as a kind of “self-regulatory limbo”: We check because we feel unsettled, then checking over and again keeps the unsettled feeling alive.

Artificial intelligence (AI) adds further........

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