We have been here before
In March 2006 I was demonstrating Civil 3D to a room of engineers deciding whether to leave Land Desktop. Afterward, a man came up and said, "Angel, if there is one complaint I have about you, it is that you make it look too easy." He meant it kindly, but it was a warning: his people were not going to get there quickly.
He was not wrong to worry. Watching somebody fluent make hard work look easy tells you nothing about how long it takes to become fluent yourself. I hear the same statements about AI now, in almost the same words.
What I wrote that week
I wrote at the time that we were on the precipice of a new era, and that the decisions being made then would change how the industry had always done things. That line has already run a couple of times on this site, about AI, so I will not run it again here. What I want to tell you instead is what actually happened next.
What actually happened next
For a while, nothing. Land Desktop kept working. Deadlines kept getting hit with it. The firms that moved early were not smarter than the firms that waited. They were just further along a learning curve that had not stopped being optional yet.
Then in June 2008, Autodesk announced that Land Desktop 2009 would be the last release. Subscription access closed that July. By spring of 2009 it was off the price list.
The firms that had waited did not get to keep waiting. They made the same decision the early movers had made two years earlier, except now they made it on a deadline, with less practice, and with everyone else already ahead of them.
The gap, not the tool
I do not know when AI stops being optional for this kind of work, and I did not know that about Civil 3D in 2006 either. What I do know is what "you make it look too easy" is actually a complaint about. Not the tool. The gap between watching somebody use it and being able to use it yourself.
That gap closes the same way it closed then. Not by admiring the demo. By doing the boring task badly for a while, until you are not doing it badly anymore.
Be Better! ...close the gap while it's still a choice.