Kevin Kelly has a provocative thesis: in the near future, authors will pay AI companies to ensure their books are used in training models. Why? Because “if your work is not known and appreciated by the AIs, it will be essentially unknown.”

It’s a strong, almost dystopian claim, but Kelly argues we’re already on that path. He uses his own experience as evidence: he stopped questioning calculators long ago, then stopped questioning Google, and now finds that most answers from current AIs are pretty reliable. His observation about younger people is even more revealing—they use AI in always-on mode, and more and more of their intangible life goes through the AI and no further. “The AIs are becoming the arbiters of truth,” he concludes.

This is one of those plausible scenarios worth keeping on your radar. Scary? Yes. Impossible? Unfortunately, no.