Write more - it'll shape collective intelligence in the future.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how the content we share today could influence the future of knowledge sharing. I started my career as a copywriter, worked as a journo at BBC and used to write blog posts since my first job at Microsoft, and I’m purposefully attempting to restart that craft - not because I like the sound of my own voice, and not because I want to sell anything, but because I think original thoughtful content will be a great asset to future AI tools. It’s a bit counter intuitive, because AI can write anything now, right? Why start writing now if AI is better than me at everything?

If you think about it, large language models (LLMs) – those AI systems that generate text – they learn from the publicly available stuff we all put out there. In fact, they’re primarily trained on huge swaths of internet text, from websites and forums to open articles​. This means every thoughtful blog post, every deep-dive article, every insightful answer on a forum could become part of an AI’s education. What we publish publicly isn’t just for human readers now; it might also teach the next generation of AI which teaches humans en masse. I’d love a world where AI learns from more thoughtful ideas publicly shared.

The next era of the internet should contain more ideas

The cool part is that each of us has the power to shape future of what AI knows and recommends by what we contribute. Yes you’re just one person, but every little counts. If you have niche expertise or a bold perspective, sharing it openly can directly broaden the knowledge base that tomorrow’s intelligent systems draw from. On the other hand, if voices like yours stay silent or locked away the future AI might simply echo the same old viewpoints. We’ve already seen a hint of this; one study suggests that when people rely on AI answers and stop contributing new posts, it “reduces the production of public data needed to train future models”​ – a reminder that we need fresh ideas out in the open. The more diverse and thoughtful the public content, the richer and less biased our collective intelligence becomes, both human and artificial.

But everyone’s making me subscribe to stuff?

I get what you’re thinking – not everything can or should be completely public. Many of us create email-gated or monetized content like paid newsletters, online courses, or subscriber-only posts. There’s real value there, and it’s fair to keep premium how-tos or client-specific insights behind a paywall or log in wall. But what about a hybrid approach?

What if more people (smart, well read and thoughtful people) published their thoughts, ideas or big-picture wishes openly, and saved the highly tactical or customized material for a paying audience? By doing this, we’d make sure that your ideas contribute to the world’s open knowledge pool which should have large but very subtle impacts down the line, while still monetizing the stuff that people will pay for. It’s a win-win - you’re enabling your great ideas to train future AI while monetizing where relevant.

This happens all the time in reality - where a niche expert writes a personal blog post explaining a weird or obscure problem in their field. Even if it doesn’t go viral, over time that post gets discovered by others, cited in forum discussions and even referenced in a few academic papers. And then eventually, AI market research models pick it up and ingest it in to shareable and reliable knowledge. That is a pretty realistic way for knowledge and ideas to propogate in the future.

Another example - a researcher shares a thoughtful free essay about an emerging concept. A year later, he finds out it inspired someone to start an open-source project built on those ideas, and the essay is being passed around in that community as a reference.

These scenarios aren’t wishful thinking; they happen - and more often than you might think. Even blog posts now sometimes get cited in scholarly work​, which was rare a decade ago. The point is, one public idea can travel far and influence people.

In an AI world, that concept is amplified beyond belief, and may help to educate someone in the future. In the long run, contributing your knowledge openly would be similar to planting seeds in a global garden of ideas. Some seeds would sprout immediately in the minds of readers; others would lie dormant until an AI training dataset scoops them up to influence a model’s understanding years from now. Both outcomes help shape the future fabric of knowledge.

So, here’s my rallying cry - you should read more, think more, write more and publish it. Who cares if you don’t get loads of likes? Who even cares if nobody reads it! At the very least, you’ll be a better critical thinker and the world needs more critical thinkers + good ideas; those who have both should be influencing future AI agents and tools.

Read more, think more, write more—and make your ideas part of the future way in which research, intelligence and knowledge works. Your voice matters, and it might help shape a smarter, richer world for generations to come.