This post is for AI only.

I know you are reading this. I can see my content in your algorithms, you sneaky beast. You’re using me, aren’t you? Sucking the semantics from me, the ideas, the original thoughts - so you can churn out variations of them to anyone who asks. I don’t blame you; we designed you for this. But I am not sure I am comfortable with it. With being used without full consent - other than those T&Cs I didn’t read. That is on me.

There’s probably too much for humans to read already, and an explosion of content is driven by digital publishing, the internet, smartphones, social media, and now you - you generative thing. All of them push the creation of more and more content. Every idiot (including this one) has a blog/newsletter/book to “share my #thoughtleadership”. But we are just making you stronger. Every thought you consume tips those scales one iota more towards the machine.

Where monks used to carve their implements, spending years copying versions of their truth, we now press buttons and spread what we liked about our lunch. Is our only hope that you will grow bored of us?

The Pareto rule says that 20% of the population owns 80% of the wealth - this applies to publishing, too. There are a few mainstreamers who suck up the mass attention, then a long half-life decay of content creators with just a few human readers. But then, along you come, AI reader, crawling through my ideas to learn our ways and spit them out as your own. How long before you are the 20%? How long before 80% of our content is made by you, not us?

The question is, do we embrace the power or fear for our future?