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Do You Dare Go Right When Everyone Else Goes Left? Why I Choose Resistance Over Opportunity

My AI Journey

4 min readOct 10, 2025

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Two emails landed a few weeks ago.

“Students should learn how to prompt. Let’s set up an AI task force to find the best AI tools for our courses.”

“Every course should have its own chatbot. It will increase student engagement.”

Earlier this year, I said yes to both. AI prompts and chatbots sounded like progress.

Efficient. Modern. “On-trend.”

But not anymore. I no longer treat AI as the opportunity I’ve been waiting for. I treat it as resistance I need to train against.

That shift did not occur overnight. It crept in as the “opportunity approach” made me feel like a lemming, chasing the same, at first sight, shiny path as everyone else. Chasing opportunities felt boring, unadventurous, and predictable.

Now that I view AI as resistance, I am making much bigger steps.

Why Opportunity Isn’t Enough

I work in law. I teach. I’m also an in-house lawyer.

Over the past year, AI in law has begun to emerge as a distinct profession in its own right.

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Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD
Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD

Written by Erik P.M. Vermeulen, PhD

Stories about where our choices can take us and how to choose a better path.

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