SAN DIEGO — Change of plans, folks.

For the last several weeks, I've been planning to write a column on artificial intelligence (AI). It was going to be about how Americans need to chill and not worry so much about the possibility of AI replacing them or preventing their 20-something kids from getting jobs. The working title was going to be: "Who's Afraid of AI?"

Now, it turns out, I am. Given everything we've learned in the last two weeks about what can happen when AI goes rogue, and a technology that was invented to be smarter than humans starts acting like it, I've realized that I'm one of those people who is afraid of AI. In fact, to borrow a phrase from Gen Z, I'm low-key terrified.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to calm my fears. Let me just say, as a native Californian, that hardly ever works.

Newsom recently issued an executive order that speeds up the implementation of a pair of AI safety laws that he recently signed to better regulate how outside groups evaluate AI programs for safety. The governor's order also explores proposals like requiring that AI companies develop a "kill switch" for their most rebellious models.

Newsom also urged President Donald Trump and members of Congress to use California's AI regulations as a model for how the federal government approaches AI safety.

"The federal government's abject failure to create any form of meaningful AI oversight or accountability should alarm every American, especially when AI CEOs themselves are begging for regulation," the governor said in a press release.

Don't misunderstand. I still think the idea of U.S. workers losing jobs to AI is overblown. It should be filed away with globalization, immigrants, trade deals and every other thing that earlier generations of U.S. workers were told to be afraid of over the last 40 years.

In particular, young people who are just starting out on life's journey can't afford to be afraid of their own shadow.

I try to impress upon my own kids — 21, 19, 17 — that they're never again going to be this free to explore, and that their lives are only going to get more complicated. I tell them that they have to know themselves well enough to identify those traits and skills that are so unique that AI can't replicate them.

Besides, the more I use AI, the more I notice the flaws and glitches that are bound to thwart a takeover of the U.S. workforce. Its brain power is impressive. But the rest of it is not ready for prime time.

For instance, artists, writers and other creative types probably don't have much to worry about. After reading a few dry and robotic paragraphs that AI whipped up for a project that my wife was working on, I said to her: "I think we assume that Stephen King's job is safe."

Later, when I told that story to a group of friends, a couple nodded in unison. One of them offered this: "Yes, because what makes those horror stories so frightening is that they are based in human experience. That is something AI doesn't understand."

The list of what AI doesn't understand is long. It includes basic empathy, common sense, social skills and human nature.

Lastly, if AI really can take your job, then one of three things is going on: you're not uniquely good at it; the job itself isn't all that valuable to society; or you should be doing something else.

That probably sounds cold and harsh. But who told you this world was going to be otherwise? Take it from someone who, in nearly four decades as a journalist, has lost 16 jobs. There are no coddling stations on the highway of life.

Nonetheless, while many of us were playing small ball and wringing our hands over the possibility of lost jobs, the AI industry was breaking free from the tech bros.

Now alarm bells are going off. Leaders of the AI industry — including the CEOs and founders of Anthropic and OpenAI — are warning that we may have already lost control of a technology that could wipe out the human race.

Initially, I dismissed that threat as hyperbole. Then I read that AI was now capable of making things that no one asked it to create. You know, like biological weapons.

OK, AI, you have my attention. You're likely not concerned about man-made safeguards like "kill switches." You're probably smart enough to get around anything we throw at you. So what do you want?

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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