By Hiran de Silva
Artificial Intelligence has become the most polarising subject of our time. For some, it’s the dawn of a golden age. For others, it’s a threat. And for almost everyone, it’s an attention magnet: add “AI” to a headline or product, and it instantly becomes more clickable, more shareable, more marketable.
Yet, paradoxically, I see the opposite reaction too. The moment something looks “AI generated,” people switch off. The content could be brilliant, the insight profound—but if the medium smells of AI, the audience disengages.
Why is that?
1. The Illusion Problem
Think about cinema. Do we go to the movies because we want to watch “flashing lights on a wall”? Or do we go because we want to immerse ourselves in drama, plot, and spectacle?
Think about theatre. Do we sit in the stalls whispering: “That man isn’t really a king, so why am I here?”
Or books. Do we tell ourselves: “This is just black shapes on white paper. Why bother?”
Of course not. We transcend the medium. The illusion is part of the deal.
But with AI, many refuse to transcend. They see the medium—and stop there. “That’s AI generated? Then I don’t care.”
2. The Historical Parallel
This isn’t the first time society has tripped over a new medium.
- When cars were invented, the law required a man with a red flag to walk in front of them. The speed limit was set to match horse carriages: five miles per hour.
- When email arrived, it was such a cumbersome process that people would phone each other to announce they’d sent an email.
- In the 1970s, quadraphonic sound was hyped as the next big thing. It vanished. Stereo was “good enough.”
So which is AI? A red flag? Quadraphonic? Or the motorcar?
I don’t believe AI will fade. And for one reason: it fuels the attention economy. Social media thrives on tricks, hooks, and grabs. AI delivers them faster, cheaper, and more powerfully than any tool before it.
3. Why the Resistance Feels Different
For decades, Hollywood dazzled us with CGI. Nobody complained that the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were “computer generated.” We accepted the illusion because it came from authoritative studios with massive budgets.
Now? The same tricks can be produced in a bedroom. The authority is gone. The gatekeepers are gone. And that unsettles people. Because if anyone can create compelling illusions, anyone—including unsavoury actors—can manipulate us.
That’s what makes AI resistance visceral. It’s not the tech. It’s the loss of gatekeepers.
4. The Social Media Village Square
A colleague of mine, Hamilton, once asked: “If everyone is shouting in the village square, how do you expect to be heard?”
My first answer was naïve: surely if your ideas make sense, intelligent people will notice.
But experience has proved otherwise. Attention isn’t given to the best ideas—it’s won by those who capture it.
And in today’s world, AI is both the problem and the solution. The only way to cut through the AI-enhanced noise is… with AI. AI vs. AI.
5. A Case Study: Excel as Proof
Let me ground this in something tangible.
Over my career, I’ve had clients who tripled my pay—not because of negotiation, but because the value I delivered transformed their processes. The catalyst? Excel. Not “Excel tricks,” but enterprise-grade solutions built on Excel’s hidden architecture.
Take this simple demonstration: you point to a number in a spreadsheet, and instantly drill down to see exactly what it’s made of—live, accurate, centrally managed.
If Microsoft launched that feature tomorrow, it would go viral overnight. Yet it already exists. It’s been there for 30 years.
This is my signature trick: the digital librarian. It looks magical, but it’s built on mainstream, stable Excel functionality. It grabs attention—and then it delivers immediate value.
6. The Big Question
Here’s the bottom line.
- AI will not fade like quadraphonic. It will become invisible, like cinema, books, email, and CGI.
- The resistance we see today is a phase: a refusal to transcend the medium. Future generations won’t blink.
- The challenge is not whether AI is good or bad. The challenge is: when the village square is full of AI-enhanced shouting, how will you be heard?
For me, the answer is authenticity: grabbing attention not with void, but with value. Eliminating so-called “Excel Hell” by showing enterprise-scale solutions that already exist—and that triple real-world pay.
The big question is: will audiences recognise that this is different?
Closing Thought
AI won’t go away. It won’t be a gimmick. It will become invisible. The real choice is whether we use it to add to the noise—or to cut through it.
And that’s not a technical choice. It’s a moral one.
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