So the main difference I see is perhaps not so much more fighting but more awareness of sente.
I think this is on the right track, but needs more precision for amateurs.
There is a big difference between sente (as it is most commonly used) and the initiative. An obsession with the former leads to ignoring the more important latter. I suspect the roots of the problem lie in two places. One is, specifically, an obsession with boundary plays and counting, which leads to not seeing the overall picture (or if you think you are seeing it, are you seeing it as clearly as you could?). The other is testosterone. Pushing the opponent around, or invading, feels good because it is sente, sente, sente. But it's just like maxing out on your credit cards. There comes a time when the bill is due AND you have to pay interest. Yet you can have the initiative without having sente, and it actually pays YOU dividends!
Sente, sente, sente is just a step up from atari, atari, atari. No half-decent amateur would play a-a-a, so why play s-s-s?
But, that said, the initiative is hard to gain and hard to handle once you have it. Historically, we could say the Japanese went overboard in investing in thickness (in all its senses) and avoiding risk by relying on no komi or small komis, and it took the Koreans to show, in very recent times, how risk-based strategies can pay off (I'd say they were aided in part by shorter time limits, though). Now, AI is apparently telling us even more about the initiative (and next to nothing about sente, incidentally). My own impression is that we (as amateurs) are hampered in getting to grips with that because we lack a framework terminology for it. Pros make up for the lack of terminology by dint of sheer and intense study, so that their intuition is trained to map all the factors inside their brains. You don't need words when you have intuition.
For amateurs, who haven't got the time to build that level of intuition, words are close to essential, as is a tailored course of study. One I would suggest is that, before you embark on AI study, you study Chinese master games of the past. They were not burdened with the deceptive word sente, and instead paid very much to the initiative. The difference with old Japanese games is stark.
Then, to bring this closer to the modern age, this could be followed up by studying what I like to call ley lines. Just as Stone Age man was apparently able to see complex patterns at ground level that we need satellites to see, AI operates with ley lines that connect all the significant parts of the board together. One reason I see value in studying old Chinese games is that they were masters of reading ley lines - they had to be, because group tax meant they had to worry all the time about keeping connections intact, even over great distances. Necessity was the mother of invention. They invented their own relevant terms, too. One was zhaoying (call & response), but they also emphasised "crowding" or pressurising, as opposed to attacking, which kept the INITIATIVE (and so hindered opposing connections, while promoting one's own).
Knotwilg has usefully emphasised several times his realisation that slow connections are bad. As far as I can recall, the main lesson he has taken from that is simply to try to avoid them. A good start. But potentially passive? Maybe a better appreciation of the initiative (and not sente), as per AI play, would teach us not to be so passive. Perhaps we should be thinking more about FAST connections (e.g. via call & response), and connections that lead somewhere, even if we don't understand quite where - like ley lines!
