Humans Don’t Want Wisdom From Other Humans Anymore. Why? What Next?

Over the weekend, I listened to Tim Ferriss discuss the impact of ChatGPT on his book sales. His bestselling catalogue, once a reliable source of royalty income, has seen a dramatic decline since ChatGPT launched in late 2022:

• 2023: -5%

• 2024: -13%

• 2025: -46%

• 2026 (run rate): -57%

If this trend continues, his print sales will be down almost 80% from 2022.

The internet, powered by AI, has become the world’s largest copying machine — operating at a scale and speed unimaginable just a few years ago.

This raises an uncomfortable question.

AI depends on high-quality human knowledge. Authors spend years creating books, articles, and ideas, supported by royalties that reward their effort. If that incentive disappears, fewer people will produce original work. Eventually, AI starts consuming the very ecosystem it depends on.

So what will matter in the age of AI?

As Kevin Kelly famously wrote:

“When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied.”

The answer is “Trust”.

Content can be copied. Advice can be generated. Code can be written. But trust cannot be downloaded or cloned. It is earned slowly and lost in an instant.

I couldn’t agree more.

I stumbled into blogging by accident during the COVID lockdown. I can think clearly, but writing was and still is not my strength. After the age of 15, my world revolved around maths, science, and electrical engineering. Everything was equations and numbers. Translating abstract thoughts into words that don’t obey Newton’s or Einstein’s laws was genuinely painful.

I kept publishing anyway, improving one post at a time. ChatGPT moment was a gift,it helped polish my writing while preserving my voice.

When I moved my writing from LinkedIn to Substack, I was genuinely surprised by how many people stopped me to ask why I wasn’t blogging anymore. That’s when I realised I had built something far more valuable than content, I had built trust and relationships with people I had never met.

The downside? I now regularly come across AI-generated articles that closely resemble my older blogs — sometimes written by respected academics and well-known self help “gurus.”

Perhaps that’s the real lesson.

In the AI era, knowledge becomes abundant. Content becomes free. Trust becomes the scarce asset.

And unlike content, trust cannot be copied

Blogging is something I enjoy, and I share my thoughts on my blog most weekends.

Read all my “Notes to Self” at view all blogs.