Who gets to be an AI expert?

Who do we listen to, and why does it matter?

I am not an AI expert.

I was reminded of this at a family reunion last week. With a glass of wine for support, I endured the usual rounds of “How’s work? How’s your husband? How’s the new neighborhood?” Like the dutiful niece I am, I asked my aunt and uncle how my cousins were doing.

“Oh, they’re great! One’s working with AI now,” my aunt said. Her answer surprised me. I hadn’t seen this cousin in years, but he’d never expressed an interest in AI before.

“He’s the AI philosopher,” my aunt said, beaming. My cousin is a philosophy professor, and he’s turned his attention to AI in the past couple of years, trying to get a paper published.

I don’t mean to pick on my poor cousin here, but something about the conversation bothered me. Maybe it was because I’d seen three different people style themselves as “the” AI philosopher in the last few months. Or maybe it was because my notes feed was full of brand-new AI publications. Or maybe it was because I kept getting spam emails for courses promising to teach me “Everything you need to know to make money with ChatGPT.”

Everywhere I turned, I saw people claiming to be AI experts. I couldn’t help but wonder, who were all these people? And where had they come from?

The calm before the storm

I didn’t know many AI experts back in 2021. That’s when I started studying AI in my graduate program. I was writing my thesis about GPT-3, the precursor to ChatGPT.

In those days, people treated AI like a flying car — something cool, sci-fi, and definitely not going to happen anytime soon. To be honest, it was hard to talk about my research. After a couple of Skynet jokes, most people were ready to change the subject.

Apart from a couple of professors, I knew only one other person studying AI—my husband. An independent researcher, he was writing a book about AI safety and posting GPT-3 tutorials on his YouTube channel. We both sensed that something big was coming. GPT-3 was already more sophisticated than most people gave it credit for. Who knew what the next generation of tools could do?

Then ChatGPT came out.

Suddenly, everyone was talking about AI. Everyone had an opinion. And that’s when the experts started to appear.

The mad scramble for status

Before grad school, I worked in marketing for a few years. I learned about branding, market positioning, and the importance of picking a specialty. The standard advice was to “Pick a niche and position yourself as an expert.”

Position yourself as an expert. Not be an expert or become an expert. Position.

I thought about that advice a lot in the weeks after ChatGPT’s release. I wrote on Medium then and started seeing articles promising to teach me how to write with ChatGPT. The first tutorials appeared in my YouTube recommendations. More time passed, and the amount of AI content exploded.

I realized what was happening — everyone was trying to position themselves. AI was the hot new trend, and ambitious people in every industry were scrambling to rebrand themselves as AI experts. They didn’t know much about AI yet, but they needed to convince everyone they did.

To be fair, this happens with every new technology. People recognize an opportunity, study it, and promote themselves. Usually, this is a gradual, organic process, so slow that you’d never notice it.

AI was different, though. It exploded into the mainstream consciousness so quickly the process was obvious. I wondered how many people woke up on November 30, saw the news, and planned their pivots right then. There also wasn’t much time for people to study the new tools before claiming mastery of them.

I’m also not trying to criticize anyone unfairly. Seizing new opportunities is good business sense, and self-promotion is the norm these days. You can learn as you go, and if you don’t call yourself an expert, no one will. Of course, there are plenty of AI scams out there, so please be careful!

Honestly, I think most people were scared. Techbros were excited, but outside of Silicon Valley, people worried about their jobs disappearing. I saw a lot of anxious Medium articles in late 2022 encouraging people to “learn to use the tools. That way, you won’t get left behind.” A copywriter afraid for her job might throw herself into AI-assisted writing; when the inevitable layoffs come, her new skillset might save her.

Becoming an expert was about survival as much as it was about ambition.

Why does it matter?

A few months ago, I read several panicked articles about how much energy chatbots were using. AI didn’t need to go rogue to kill us. It only needed to accelerate global warming.

Meanwhile, I interviewed for a science writing job at a nearby university. I talked to two computer science professors to try to understand their research interests. One wrote a paper about making neural networks more efficient, and the other designed faster, energy-saving information systems.

In other words, these two professors were quietly solving the AI energy crisis. In fact, their research went back decades, long before the crisis ever started. They were prepared.

I’d never heard those professors interviewed or their papers cited. Before that day, I’d never even known their names. But they were AI experts, and they were fixing the important problems.

Expertise is often about market positioning and communication skills as much as it is actual knowledge. It’s a person’s brand, not their experience. We hear some voices over others, and the loudest people aren’t necessarily the ones worth listening to. Will anyone hear these two professors over the chatter of video essays and social media personalities? I don’t know, and I wonder who else we’re not hearing from.

And what about the loud and proud AI experts cluttering your news feed? Again, I’m not saying they’re all dishonest. Some are good people who’ve spent the past two years learning as much as possible. But please remember that many of these experts only became aware of AI in the same moment you did. They probably don’t have decades of experience to back up their claims, and they’re responding to the same anxiety you feel.

Before you give an expert your time, attention, or money, ask yourself, “Why them?” See if their content goes back farther than November 2022. Do they share unique insights, or are they just repeating what others say? Worst of all, do they play on your fears to get you to open your wallet?

Finding my voice

I’m not an AI expert, at least not in most people’s eyes. Yes, I’ve done research, but I’ve never publicly positioned myself as an expert. I didn’t join the mad scramble.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should’ve. I’m still interested in AI, but for a long time, I didn’t know how to share my ideas. It felt too late to say anything.

Then, I wrote an article about the Nanowrimo AI controversy. More of you read it than I expected, which gave me the courage to write more about AI. I realized I could write the occasional AI article on Substack. I don’t need to start a new publication, rebrand myself, or compete with people who’ve spent the last two years filling every niche.

I don’t need to be an expert. I can just write. Thank you for listening.

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Read the whole series - “Who gets to be an AI expert?”

Part 2: Do I look like an expert to you?

Part 3: Who are the real AI experts, and how do we identify them?