January 24, 2026

Will AI steal my thought leadership?

A reader replied to my last message about sharing your expertise for free online with a follow-up question:

I know many experts who don’t share their thoughts out of fear that they will feed their own competition (AI chatbots). How do you think about that?

As a former musician, I think about this the same way I thought about college students trading songs for free on Napster.

I wanted people to hear my music, so I would have been overjoyed if fans had been sharing my songs with their friends.

Do I need to make enough money to eat?

Of course.

Would these fans technically have been stealing my music?

I guess so.

But the truth is, I would’ve been thrilled if one of my songs had been the most frequently downloaded (ahem, stolen) song on Napster.

If that had been the case, making money in other ways would have been pretty easy.

To paraphrase Tim O’Reilly:

For thought leaders, obscurity is a far greater threat than theft.

How do you avoid obscurity?

Yours,

—J