Welcome to the age of omnipresent suspicion

A few days ago, I attended a conference where the speaker read his talk off his note cards. I immediately recognized ChatGPT’s fingerprints: “and this is where it gets interesting,” “it’s not X, it’s Y”… The topic was management, a field that already generates plenty of hot air without any help from machines. With AI in the mix, I tuned out after a couple of minutes. Had he spoken from an outline in his head, he would almost certainly have been livelier and easier to follow. Afterward, I realized the problem runs deeper than one dull talk. AI does remove the barrier of linguistic insecurity that holds so many people back, and that matters. But it also spreads a poison through language that contaminates what we produce and, above all, how we receive what others produce. Every email, report and book now arrives with a question attached: how much of it was actually written by a human? {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/PhotoLVitaud-169.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/PhotoLVitaud-11.jpg","eyebr…