The Quiet Thing No One Talks About When They Talk About AI

AI isn't just threatening jobs -- it's eroding the psychological infrastructure where humans build self-worth. Research shows passive AI use reduces self-efficacy and meaning at work. Cognitive-behavioral therapy breaks down when the negative thought ("the machine is better than me") is actually true. The real distortion isn't about AI -- it's the inherited belief that your value equals your output. The last time technological displacement hit this hard, the psychological scars lasted 200 years. We have the theory to understand what's happening. The question is whether we act on it.