October 9, 2026

Everything is Mars to AI

How would you describe to someone what it’s like to walk around on Mars?

You couldn’t base it on personal experience because no one’s ever been there.

So, you’d gather a bunch of information and photos and data and so forth and do your best to describe it to the other person.

But that’s not describing what it’s like to walk around on Mars.

That’s sharing information that you gathered about Mars.

And there’s a big difference between experience and information.

Why does this matter?

Because everything is Mars to AI.

AI hasn’t experienced anything.

It’s just pulling in all the available information and presenting it as complete and authoritative.

And its ability to pull in massive amounts of information is pretty amazing and useful in tons of circumstances!

But it is not complete and authoritative. It’s never a first-person account. It’s only as good as the underlying information.

For example...

If it turned out that all the information we had about Mars was completely wrong, me describing it to you based on the available info would also be completely wrong.

So if you ever ended up having a chance to visit Mars, you would be very surprised by the actual experience (hopefully in a pleasant way, buuuut... probably not).

Here’s the thing...

Experience transcends words in the same way that visiting NYC transcends studying a map of NYC.

AI has no experiences. It only knows what it has read about experiences. And because people tend to anthropomorphize AI, it’s really easy to forget this fact.

AI might be able to tell you how to get around New York City, but it sure as heck can’t tell you what it’s like to live there.

If you operate in a domain where having the actual experience matters, AI can’t compete.

Yours,

—J