The Dangerous Incentive AI Creates for Your Voice

Hey Everyone - I spent the last 2 days at a newsletter conference. I learned a ton of things, and I’m sure you will be seeing them reflected there. Honestly, it was just nice to be around a ton of other people building in the same way I am. While there was some AI talk, it was refreshing that that wasn’t the entire focus of the conference.

This week:

Let’s dive in.

Here is something I have been thinking about that I do not hear enough people talking about.

AI is, by definition, average.

That is not a criticism. It is just how the technology works. Large language models are trained on massive amounts of human-generated text. The output they produce is essentially the statistical center of everything they have absorbed. The consensus opinion. The median take. The most probable next word based on everything that came before it.

This is what makes AI so useful. You can ask it to write a blog post and it will give you something competent. You can ask it to summarize a report and it will hit the key points. You can ask it to draft an email and it will sound professional. It is remarkably good at producing work that sits right in the middle of what "good" looks like across millions of examples.

Now think about what happens when everyone has access to that same machine.

A million newsletters that all sound the same. A million LinkedIn posts built on the same frameworks. A million landing pages with the same value propositions written in the same tone. The baseline of all content is rising to "polished and competent." Which sounds great until you realize that polished and competent is now the floor, not the ceiling. Average just got a massive upgrade, and that means average no longer gets noticed.

This creates an incentive problem that I think is genuinely dangerous.

If the middle is now occupied by machines, the only way to register as distinctly human is to be different. And the fastest way to be different is not to be more thoughtful or more specific. It is to be louder. More extreme. More provocative. Not because you believe what you are saying, but because it is the only signal that cuts through a sea of AI-generated competence.

We have already seen this movie. Social media proved that when platforms reward attention over substance, the loudest voices win. The most measured, nuanced takes get buried. The hot take economy is not new. But AI threatens to recreate it across every medium, not because of an algorithm optimizing for engagement, but because the center got swallowed whole and all that is left visible is the edges.

That is a terrible place to end up. A world where the only way to stand out from the machines is to say something extreme is not a world that produces better thinking. It produces worse thinking that performs well. There is a big difference between having a strong perspective earned through experience and having a hot take designed to get a reaction. One compounds over time. The other just generates noise.

I will be honest. I do not know what the answer is here.

I know what I do not want the answer to be. I do not want it to be "just be more controversial." I do not want the defining skill of the AI era to be the willingness to say something outrageous. That is a race to the bottom, and we have enough of that already.

What I think is worth protecting is the specific. The quiet take that comes from actually doing the work and having a real experience to draw from. The opinion that is interesting not because it is loud but because it is earned. The voice that sounds different from AI not because it is trying to be different, but because it is rooted in something the model simply does not have access to: a particular life, a particular set of failures, a particular point of view that no training data could replicate.

The challenge is that those voices are harder to find. They do not perform as well in feeds. They require patience from readers. And in a world where the average just got really, really good, patience is in short supply.

I do not think the answer is to reject AI. I use it every day. But I do think we need to be honest about the incentive structure it is creating. When the middle disappears, the pressure to move to the extremes is real. Recognizing that pressure is the first step toward not giving in to it.

The people who will matter most in the next few years are not the ones who are loudest. They are the ones who are most specific. That is a harder path. But it is the only one that actually builds something worth reading.

As I mentioned in the intro, I went to a newsletter conference called “The Media Summit”. It was an in person event, and it was a great experience. What made it so compelling was all of the fascinating people that I met.

While I learned a ton, pretty much all of these concepts are available for free online. What I could not get online were the 25+ conversations that I had with people doing similar things. Information as well as potential for partnership make these a tremendous ROI.

This got me thinking, what makes an event valuable? How do you make an event worthwhile?

One of the biggest problems that many people have (including me), is that when you go to an event by yourself it is SO AWKWARD. I’m very extroverted, and even I find myself standing alone not sure how to approach people.

This conference did a great job facilitating communication with people. These are a few things I picked up that I’m integrating into any future event that I may run.

1) Allow people to mingle online and schedule time. The event used a platform called circle where people all introduced themselves beforehand. Many people reached out to organize coffee chats. It was very useful that the platform had profile pictures so you could see what people looked like. You also knew a little bit about them so it was easy to start conversations on a point of mutual interest.

2) Name tags and prompt questions are huge. This wasn’t necessarily from this event, but having name tags with useful information (not just your name and title), makes a big difference. Some events I’ve gone to have you put your interests on the name tags, I like that. I also like giving people prompt questions that help you get to know each other. A dinner I went to had 3 prompts which I liked. They were:

3) Organize small groups. That same dinner with the prompts was by far the best overall connection that I had at the event. I was at a table with 6 others, and this small group really connected. Creating opportunities at an event to break people into groups of 4-8 people facilitates connection in an extremely meaningful way.

I’ll be applying this and many more things in my get togethers going forward.

I jammed a ton of info into my brain at this conference the last few days. There were some great speakers that I really enjoyed. Here are a few of their channels:

Every useful thing I wrote about in the Building section this week started with a conversation I had to initiate with a stranger. That is a skill. And it is one that most people, including me, have had to work at.

The good news is that working a room is not about being the most charismatic person there. It is about preparation and a few simple habits that make the whole experience less awkward and more productive.

Start before you arrive. If the event lets you see a guest list or attendee directory, spend thirty minutes on LinkedIn beforehand. Find the people you want to meet and send a quick connection request with a note. Something like "Looking forward to the conference, would love to connect while we are both there." This does two things for you. It gives you a reason to approach them in person because you are no longer a stranger. And it gives you a built-in topic of conversation because you already know a bit about what they do. The difference between walking up to someone cold and walking up to someone you have already exchanged a message with is enormous.

Once you are at the event, think about where you stand. The coffee station, the area right outside the main room between sessions, the snack table. These are high-traffic transitional zones where people are briefly unanchored from their groups. You are not interrupting anyone. You are just putting yourself where natural collisions happen. This is much more effective than sitting down in a corner or hovering at the edge of a conversation circle waiting for an opening.

When you do start a conversation, keep it simple. Introduce yourself first. Then ask what brought them to the conference. That is it. You do not need a clever line. Introducing yourself first takes the pressure off the other person and sets a tone of openness. Asking what brought them here gives you immediate context and usually leads somewhere interesting.

From there, ask questions. People like talking about themselves, and the right question can turn a surface-level exchange into a real conversation. I like to ask "what is your story" or "what are you excited about right now." Both of these tend to get people past the job title and into what they actually care about. Listen to what they say and follow up on the parts that genuinely interest you. That is all it takes to stand out from most people at a conference who are just waiting for their turn to talk.

Keep conversations short unless you read the cues and they clearly want to keep going. A few minutes is plenty for a first interaction. Exchange contact info before you move on. The real work happens after the event. If you want to build a real relationship with someone you met, follow up. Send a message the next day. Ask them to grab lunch, coffee, or dinner. Most people never do this, which means the ones who do are immediately memorable. The conversation at the conference is just the opening. The follow-up is where the relationship actually begins.

And one last thing. You do not have to do this alone. I have found that three is the perfect number for attending a conference. You never have to stand by yourself if you do not want to. But you are also not a closed-off group that nobody can approach. One person can hold a conversation while the other two branch out. You can regroup, share notes on who you have met, and introduce each other to new people. If going to events solo is what has been stopping you, find two others and go together. It changes everything.