The AI "Denominator Problem" No One is Talking About
Content creators are clueless about AI
I can’t believe how many times I’ve heard a content creator say something like,
“AI is awesome! I can now publish 100x as much content in the same amount of time as I could before.”
That sounds good until you spend 3 seconds thinking about what it means.
Now everyone can publish 100x more content than before.
Remember: You aren’t the only person who’s heard of ChatGPT.
Also, billions of non-native English speakers can click a few buttons and add to the growing pile of “content” on the internet.
Most people can see that you can’t make everyone rich if you gave everyone 10 million dollars.
The same logic should apply here.
I wrote an article yesterday talking about the incentive problem with writing on Medium in my Medium vs Substack article.
Here is what I mean by the “denominator problem”
If you want to think about how much content you are producing, you should think of the percentage of content you produce compared to what is being produced by everyone else.
For example, if you wrote 2 articles per week back in 2021, you might have been producing MORE content than if you were writing 2 articles per day now.
This is because you were producing a greater percentage of the content.
ChatGPT has flooded the internet with garbage.
Even if you say, “No way, I edit all of my AI articles and the quality of the articles hasn’t changed”, it doesn’t matter.
The point is that there is just too much content to sort through now.
The average library contains between 50 000 and 100 000 books.
Imagine a library that had 50 million to 100 million books.
Even if the quality of all the books were the same, it would take you hours to walk from one end of the library to the other.
The number of times an average book would be read would drop by a factor of 1000.
There aren’t more people than before, and people don’t read more than before (not much anyway).
The fact that it is now so much harder to get your content seen is frustrating, and it just makes content creators want to publish more and more bad content.
If a good piece of work immediately gets lost at sea, then what is the point of spending much effort to write something?
Why not try 20 more “low effort” pieces with click-baity titles? At least you have more chance of someone clicking, right?
It feels like you are getting more lottery tickets.
The denominator problem is obvious when we stop and think about it.
But it isn’t easy to feel because we don’t see the mountain of digital trash in our faces.
The homepage of Medium still shows you the same number of articles as before.
But you are now seeing a much tinier fraction of all the new articles than you were before.
This means your articles have a much smaller chance of showing up on other people’s feeds, too.
It's not just Medium obviously. YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn… It’s happening everywhere.
What is the solution?
This might be a hot take, but perhaps platforms like Medium should limit the amount of content you can produce in a day.
Do people need to be publishing more than 1 or 2 articles in a day?
Platforms also need to think long and hard about how to incentivize quality over quantity.
Maybe instead of just “claps”, Medium needs to have a button readers can click to indicate AI garbage or spam. (This needs to be done well or people could abuse the system)
If they don’t, they will get more and more garbage.
AI agents are coming out now where it is easier than ever to produce mass “content”.
The denominator problem will continue to get worse before it gets better.
As a writer, I think the solution is to connect with other writers and promote each other’s work.
You need to find a loyal audience that respects your work.
I’d also highly recommend starting an email newsletter using Beehiiv.
I use it for my AI newsletter (to great success).
You also need to find an audience that will click on your articles because they trust that when you type something, it is probably valuable and worth reading.
If you fall into the trap of producing more and more garbage, you’ll lose any loyal readers and become stuck in the trap of needing to churn out more and more crap than ever before.
I’d love to hear any thoughts in the comments!
📬 Subscribe to my AI Growth Guys Newsletter
I share the smartest ways to use AI to grow your business and income.
🌐 Visit my sites:
AI Growth Guys — AI tools, tactics, and training
Cartario — Generate pro product photos & personal brand images with AI
Best AI Tools Stack — My ranked AI tools directory (with reviews & affiliate links)
AI Fitness Calculators — Smart training tools for athletes and lifters
💼 Connect with me on LinkedIn
Note: Some links may be affiliate links. I only recommend products I use and love. If you purchase through a link, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
For me the answer is that I ignore any content which seems created by AI, and if I am bothered, I will also block the person posting it. I tried to find any Substack policy on posting AI-generated content. Do correct me if I am wrong, but there doesn't seem to have one, which seems a major flaw. Medium seems to be currently sinking without trace, but at least belatedly tried to ban AI-generated articles.
Well said. It's frustrating to fight against all this AI generated slop with decent content. I started this Substack a month ago with the idea to write long-form content, but I soon realized no one reads it. I do republish some of my content to Medium, where it also doesn't get much traffic. I've had to write shorter pieces, still maintaining quality and definitely spending more time than someone who just asks ChatGPT to generate it.
When it comes to Medium, I think they have a system in place to fight spam created by AI, but it's a tough task, as AI is basically a summary of human writing style. So, your idea involving human content flagging might work.