We started a journal about who actually gets AI at work
Terrified of AI is Swanswater's editorial side: essays on who gets to use AI at work, what it really costs, and what a small firm can do about it. Every number sourced. No cookies. No names.
We build websites and business systems for small firms in Stirling. That is not the obvious background for publishing a journal. But we see the same thing in almost every business we work with, and nobody seemed to be writing it down.
The technology got cheap. The access did not.
A sole trader in Alloa can use the same AI model as a FTSE 100 company. What they cannot get is the training, the time, the permission and the safe setup that make it useful. Those still flow to the people who already had the most. So we started Terrified of AI, a journal about who actually gets to use AI at work, what it really costs, and what a small firm can do about it.
The first essay
The people who need AI most makes the argument with the numbers rather than around them.
Employment among 22 to 25 year olds in the occupations most exposed to generative AI is 19% below where it would have been, according to the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, using payroll data through June 2026. 78% of knowledge workers bring their own AI to work because their employer did not provide one, and 39% received any training, from the Microsoft Work Trend Index 2026. And 73% of the most productive AI users in an organisation are managers or executives, according to Gartner in May 2026.
Closer to home, 32% of UK workers have had any AI training, from ONS and CIPD data in 2026. Most have not. That is the gap, and it is not closing on its own.
A reference anyone can use
Every figure the journal uses lives on one page: the Numbers page, with its source, the period it covers and the region. It is published under CC BY 4.0, so you can cite it, quote it or reuse it, with attribution. If you are writing a business case, a policy or a grant application and need a sourced number on AI at work, start there. We keep it current.
How it runs
The journal carries no cookies and no banner, because it does not need them. It carries no personal names either, only Swanswater Ltd. The argument should stand on the sources, not on who is making it.
The advisory work behind it is ours. Where a firm wants help closing its own access gap, that is done by Swanswater, at fixed fees published on the site, so the cost is known before the conversation starts. Same rules as everything else we do.
If you would rather read than talk, the newsletter sends each essay when it is published and nothing else.