Confuse the models: Why the experience economy is winning the AI age

By -Prathima Manohar  

“Be unpredictable. Confuse the models.”

When rapper will.i.am offered this advice in the context of artificial intelligence, it sounded like mischief. It now reads like economic strategy.

For two centuries, prosperity rewarded productivity and order: standardised factories, replicable services, scalable systems. Artificial intelligence has perfected this logic. It thrives on patterns. It learns from repetition. It monetises patterned language. In doing so, it is quietly absorbing much of what used to pass for “knowledge work.”

And yet, something odd is happening alongside this acceleration. As algorithms become more capable, people are paying more for things that refuse to be optimised.

They are travelling farther to eat food that tastes like nowhere else. They are queueing for neighbourhood walks and street festivals to hear authentic local beats. They are choosing based on a friend’s testimony over online recommendations. They are investing time ...