Let’s start with a public service announcement: if someone’s selling you an “AI secrets” course for $499, the only intelligence they’ve automated is yours—right out of your wallet.

I’ve been watching this AI hysteria unfold like a bad MLM for geeks. Everyone’s suddenly an “AI strategist,” “AI whisperer,” or “Chief Prompt Officer.” The same folks who couldn’t tell a token from a toaster six months ago are now promising to “future-proof your business through artificial cognition.” Spoiler: there is no cognition. There’s barely comprehension. What we call “AI” right now is just fancy autocomplete with a PR department.

Simon Poulton said something on The ADOTAT Show coming up MONDAY that hit me right in the marketing cynicism gland: most people reacting to AI aren’t reacting to the tech—they’re reacting to a myth. And like any good myth, it’s got believers, prophets, and a growing line of snake oil salesmen trying to turn fear into consulting retainers.

Every era has its cult. Ours just swapped incense for GPUs.

AI isn’t thinking. It’s not plotting. It’s not dreaming of electric sheep or your job title. It’s running probability math at scale. It looks at what’s been said before, guesses what should come next, and delivers it in a confident, pseudo-profound tone—kind of like that one coworker who always sounds smart until you realize he’s repeating your last sentence back at you.

That’s what this thing is. A statistical parrot with great diction.

But humans love giving machines souls, so now everyone’s treating language models like they’re auditioning for sainthood. Founders are out here overselling their “AI-powered disruption” like it’s a 2008 ICO. Half the startups I see are one unpaid intern and a Python script wrapped in an “intelligent automation platform” pitch deck.

I’ve seen these dog-and-pony shows before. A “machine learning threat matrix” that turned out to be two guys in Mumbai reading help desk tickets. A “predictive retail algorithm” that was literally a 19-year-old flipping through CoStar listings. My favorite? A content tool that “identified viral moments” by scanning transcripts for words like crazy or ridiculous. Genius. The future is now, apparently.

What we’re calling “AI” is about as intelligent as a fortune cookie with Wi-Fi.

Large language models aren’t reasoning—they’re guessing, very, very fast. They break your question into data crumbs, then run those crumbs through a statistical meat grinder to predict which word most likely comes next. It’s advanced math, not enlightenment. There’s no “aha” moment inside GPT’s neural net. No spark. Just trillions of token predictions.

Even Sam Altman, patron saint of OpenAI, admits it’s basically “next-word prediction.” He’s right. It’s probabilistic poetry—brilliantly structured nonsense that occasionally sounds like truth.

And the people pushing “AGI is near!” love to ignore a simple fact: prediction isn’t understanding. These models don’t know what they’re saying—they just know what sounds plausible. That’s why ChatGPT can write a sonnet about blockchain but still tell you to microwave your phone if it freezes.

Half the world thinks AI is going to enslave humanity; the other half thinks it’s going to make them billionaires. Both are wrong.

The “AI will take all our jobs” crowd hasn’t noticed that most jobs are already being done by Slack channels, corporate apathy, and caffeine. The “AI will make me rich” crowd is building vaporware for VCs who still think ChatGPT is a person.

The truth? AI isn’t replacing people—it’s replacing patience. It’s automating the boring stuff. Drafting emails, resizing banner ads, filling out slide decks no one reads. The first draft of everything is now free. But the second draft—the one that actually matters? That’s still 100% human.

AI can summarize your meeting notes, but it can’t tell you your CEO’s lying through his teeth. It can write ad copy, but it can’t make you care about it. It can simulate curiosity, but it doesn’t have any.

The real winners in this “AI revolution” aren’t the fearmongers or the prophets—they’re the builders who understand the gap between hype and function.

AI won’t replace creatives, strategists, or thinkers. It’ll replace people who’ve already given up thinking. The mid-level managers who confuse “efficiency” with “insight.” The marketers who believe a tool can replace taste. The “growth hackers” who think creativity is just math with better lighting.

Everyone else? You’re fine.

The real power of AI is leverage. It’s the industrial revolution for intellect—but only if you treat it like a tool, not a deity. Use it to amplify your humanity, not outsource it. Automate the dull parts, sharpen your unique voice, and stop letting venture-backed delusion define your future.

The irony of all this hysteria? The machines aren’t the problem. The humans pretending to understand them are.

So next time someone tries to sell you “AI enlightenment,” ask them a simple question: “Does it actually work?”

If they start explaining instead of answering, congratulations—you’ve met a disciple of the Church of Computational Bullshit.

Stay Bold. Stay Curious. And for the love of all things electric—don’t eat the marker just because ChatGPT said it’s lunch.