When Everyone Became an AI Expert Overnight
3 Part Series
Part I – The Overnight AI Expert Phenomenon
Not long ago, most people couldn’t explain what a language model was, how training data worked, or why context mattered more than output. That’s not a criticism—it was simply reality. These were specialized domains, learned slowly through work, failure, and responsibility.
Then AI tools started to become accessible.
Almost immediately, timelines filled with confident takes, “AI strategy” threads, tool rankings, and sweeping predictions. People who had never built a system, owned a production failure, or carried downstream responsibility were suddenly presenting themselves as experts.
This didn’t happen because they became smarter overnight, it happened because AI reduced the distance between ignorance and articulation dramatically.
For the first time, someone could sound informed without first understanding the problem space and fluency arrived before comprehension and, ultimately, confidence arrived before consequence.
That’s new… and it matters.
Expertise has traditionally required time in the work, exposure to edge cases, and accountability when things go wrong. AI removes much of that friction on the surface, all while leaving the consequences untouched underneath. But what we’re witnessing isn’t anything close to rise in expertise; it’s simply a rise in unearned authority – authority inferred from polish rather than proof.
To be clear, this isn’t about age. I’ve met brilliant twenty-somethings and dangerously complacent veterans over my nearly 62 years in life and 50+ years in the workforce. The dividing line certainly has something to do with someone’s birth year “life experience”, but not always and not entirely. It does have a lot to do with whether someone has ever been accountable for a system when it failed, truly accountable.
The rise of AI didn’t create false experts; they’ve been around forever. Remember these folks:
- Bernie Madoff – Convicted of fraud (2009)
- Elizabeth Holmes – Convicted of fraud (2022)
- Sam Bankman-Fried – Convicted of fraud (2023)
What AI does change is how easily false experts can now pass unnoticed.