Boss wants me to learn a new skill, but the person training me feels that their job security is being threatened

I’m currently working in biotech, drug discovery. My normal job duties involve a lot of manual lab work, but my boss mentioned to me that there was an opportunity to learn how to use the lab automation platforms that we have in the lab and I thought that would be a cool challenge so I expressed interest.

What I didn’t know about this was that the current expert/manager of this department is very difficult to work with (they have no subordinates for this reason). They insist on doing everything themselves and are extremely defensive about new people coming in to learn under them. They are also obviously taking advantage of their position of being the only real expert in this department by leaning into a very relaxed schedule despite others needing his help to complete tasks. Basically it’s obvious they’re slacking off, but they’re getting away with it because there is nobody else to replace them.

I understand that the technology is expensive and heavily relied upon, and that a lot of training would be required to get me up to a point where I could even just autonomously run a single experiment using these platforms, and I am fully willing to take on as much training as needed to get me to that point. However, I can’t help but feel really discouraged about getting trained by this person because of their attitude and my training generally going against their best interests.

What should I do? Is there a good way to deal with someone like this? I don’t think this person is necessarily mean or bad, and they’re really an expert at their job but I am feeling like I’m being set up for failure at the moment just because of the circumstances.

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