I use AI tools every day. I use them to write faster, to structure ideas, to challenge assumptions. And the more I use them, the more I notice something that nobody seems to want to say out loud: they are quietly draining the life from the content they help create.
It is not a flaw exactly. It is by design. Ask any AI tool a pointed question and you will get a balanced, considered, thoroughly hedged response. Ask it about a conspiracy theory and it will patiently explain why the evidence does not support it. Ask it to take a side and it will give you both sides. Ask it to be provocative and it will be provocative in the most measured, responsible way imaginable. Which, of course, is not provocative at all.
What We Actually Want
Look at the gravitational pull of podcasts over the last decade. Joe Rogan is not beloved because he is always right. He is beloved because he is always present — curious, opinionated, willing to go somewhere uncomfortable and stay there for a while. That is what people tune in for. Not the facts. The friction.
And this is not new human behaviour. We have always gathered around people with strong views. Around campfires, in pubs, on talkback radio. The format changes; the instinct does not. We want someone to tell us what they actually think, even — maybe especially — when we disagree with it. That tension is what generates the spark of a real conversation.
We do not gather around campfires to hear a balanced summary of the evening. We gather to hear someone say something worth arguing about.
The Artemis Experiment
I was having a conversation with Gemini recently about the Artemis mission — specifically the photographs taken during the lunar flyby. I want to be clear: I am not a flat-earther by any stretch. I use Starlink. I communicate via satellites on a daily basis. The earth is round, the sun is real, and I have no interest in pretending otherwise.
But I was curious. I asked some pointed questions about the photos — the angles, the light sources, the framing. And Gemini explained it perfectly. The illumination on the lunar surface corresponds to the solar angle at that precise moment in the orbital path. The secondary light source visible on the earth-facing side is reflected earthshine. The geometry checks out exactly as the mission parameters would predict.
It was a complete, accurate, well-reasoned explanation. And I finished reading it feeling almost nothing. Not because the information was wrong — it was not. But because it was delivered with the emotional register of an instruction manual. A brilliant instruction manual. But still.
Perfect information, delivered without a pulse. Accurate, complete, correct — and curiously unsatisfying in the way that only the impeccably correct can be.
Conspiracy as Entertainment
Here is the part that might make people uncomfortable: conspiracy theories have become so prevalent in modern culture, at least in part, because they are entertaining. Not because people are stupid. Because the format works. There is a narrator with a point of view. There is a mystery. There is a villain. There is a reveal. It hits the same structural beats as a thriller novel, and our brains are wired to respond to exactly that.
I am not advocating for misinformation. I want to be very clear about that. But I think there is something worth examining in the fact that channels built on wild speculation routinely outperform channels built on rigorous accuracy. That gap exists for a reason, and dismissing it as audience stupidity misses the point entirely. It is a storytelling failure, not an intelligence failure.
The Cost of Correctness
The risk with AI-generated content is not that it will be wrong. It is that it will be right in a way that nobody wants to read. Think of a stock ticker. Every number on that ticker is accurate. Real-time, verified, precise. And unless you are a day trader, you would not read it for pleasure. You would not share it. You would not quote it at dinner. It does not build an audience because it has no personality — it is pure signal with no noise, and as it turns out, we need a little noise.
Content that does not entertain does not spread. Content that does not spread does not build a readership. And a readership that never forms cannot be informed, inspired, or changed by anything you write. The factual correctness of your content becomes irrelevant the moment your audience stops caring enough to read it.
Where AI Actually Earns Its Keep
I do not want this to read as a takedown of AI tools, because that is not what I believe. I use them constantly, and they make me faster, sharper, and better at what I do. But I use them the way a good editor uses a thesaurus — as a resource, not as a replacement for judgment.
AI is an extraordinary sparring partner. It will challenge your logic, fill your gaps, and structure your chaos into something readable. What it will not do — what it cannot do, yet — is take a position and defend it with the full weight of a lived perspective behind it. That part is still ours. And if we outsource it too eagerly, we will end up with an internet full of content that is technically flawless and completely forgettable.
So I will keep using AI. And I will keep writing my own opinions into everything it helps me produce. Because the goal was never to be correct. The goal was to be worth reading.
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