The Scarcity Has Changed
For most of human history, information was difficult to access.
Learning a new skill often meant finding the right book, finding the right mentor, or spending years discovering things through trial and error.
Today, that has changed.
Ask AI almost any question, and within seconds you’ll receive a thoughtful, well-structured explanation.
That would have seemed extraordinary not long ago.
Yet we’ve adapted to it remarkably quickly.
We’re entering an era where explanations are becoming abundant.
And whenever something becomes abundant, something else becomes scarce.
The interesting question isn’t how good AI will become.
It’s what becomes scarce because of it.
Where Do Explanations Come From?
When people talk about AI, the conversation usually revolves around what it can do.
Can it replace jobs?
Can it write better?
Can it think?
Those are interesting questions.
But I don’t think they’re the most interesting ones.
The question I keep coming back to is much simpler.
Where do all those explanations come from?
AI can explain almost anything.
But every explanation has an origin.
Someone had to build the company.
Conduct the research.
Write the book.
Travel to the place.
Take the photograph.
Try, fail, learn, and change their mind.
Long before AI explained it, someone experienced it.
The Experience Layer
That’s why I believe experience is becoming more valuable, not less.
Not because AI is replacing human knowledge.
But because it depends on it.
Every explanation begins with someone experiencing the world.
Someone noticing something.
Trying something.
Building something.
Failing.
Learning.
Changing their mind.
Only then can it become knowledge.
Only then can it be explained.
AI can explain the world.
It can’t experience it.
What It Changed for Me
Over the past year, I’ve noticed a change in the way I learn.
I still read.
I still enjoy learning from other people.
And I use AI almost every day.
But I’ve become much more interested in paying attention.
Walking through cities with a camera.
Filming ordinary moments.
Watching how people interact.
Observing how people and businesses behave.
Looking for patterns rather than headlines.
Those moments rarely feel important at the time.
Yet they’re often the moments I find myself thinking about weeks later.
I’ve come to realize that the most valuable part of my work doesn’t happen when I’m sitting behind a keyboard.
It happens long before that.
While I’m paying attention to the world around me.
AI helps me challenge those observations.
Develop them.
Organize them.
Sometimes even express them more clearly than I could on my own.
But it doesn’t replace the observation.
It builds on it.
What Becomes Valuable
If explanations become abundant, then explanations alone become less valuable.
Not because they’re less useful.
But because they’re no longer scarce.
The same thing happened when information moved from libraries to the internet.
Access stopped being the advantage.
Judgment became the advantage.
I think AI is creating another shift.
The people who create the most value won’t necessarily be the ones producing the most explanations.
They’ll be the ones who continue exploring.
Observing.
Experimenting.
Building.
Changing their minds when reality surprises them.
Because those are the experiences that eventually become tomorrow’s knowledge.
A Different Way of Looking at AI
I don’t see AI as the end of human knowledge.
I see it as one of the most remarkable ways we’ve ever organized it.
It gives us access to ideas, research, explanations, and perspectives that would once have taken days, weeks, or even years to discover.
That’s extraordinary.
But it hasn’t changed where knowledge begins.
It still begins with someone asking a question nobody has answered before.
Someone noticing something that others overlooked.
Someone trying an idea that might fail.
Someone paying attention.
Technology has changed dramatically.
That part hasn’t.
AI can explain the world.
It can’t experience it.
And perhaps that’s exactly why our own experiences have never been more valuable.
