I meet hundreds of founders every year.

Through programs, events, mentoring, or simply people applying to work with me.

And regardless of whether you're a founder or not - this is one worth paying attention to.

AI is mostly touted as a game changer for efficiency and productivity.

Applied correctly - I completely agree.

But too often?

It is not.

People are genuinely wasting more time than ever thanks to AI.

And I think many of us now exist in a perpetual state of mild infuriation because of it.

Hear me out…

Say more, communicate less

"We're currently documenting baselines across the cohort where we're establishing a modularized wedge for asynchronous deployment."

The above is almost verbatim from an email update I received from a startup founder.

AI might have spruced up and sped up her update.

But it slowed me down as the reader.

That's the infuriating part.

And increasingly, that's becoming the pattern.

As founders adopt AI more aggressively, I'm receiving more updates, documents and messages that technically say more, but communicate less.

As I approach 15 years working with tech startups, my exposure keeps increasing.

But my speed of interpretation is going backwards.

And you might be feeling the same way if you've "master prompted" your AI to optimise for efficiency or "no fluff".

Fast and slow

Because whilst many of us aspire to operate at a constant high intellectual level, according to Daniel Kahneman's best-selling Thinking, Fast and Slow, our brains operate in two modes:

System 1 and System 2.

To simplify them:

• System 2 thinking is reasoning: it's draining and you can feel it happening when your brain slows down to process something like 236 × 76.
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• System 1 thinking is automatic: it's memorised, instinctive and requires very little processing energy, like 2 × 2 = 4.

Importantly, with enough repetition and exposure, System 2 thinking can eventually become System 1.

But if you're constantly writing and consuming "AI slop" or jargon-stuffed corporate waffle, it's likely mildly infuriating because communication should mostly operate as System 1, not System 2.

2 minute noodles made everyone feel like a chef.

AI now makes everyone feel like a copywriter.

Neither means you're good at it.

Clear over clever

One of the oldest lessons in copywriting is:

clear over clever.

Your audience should not have to mentally untangle your writing just to understand your point.

And if your AI tool is coughing up responses so complex you need three reads to understand what it's actually trying to communicate, maybe the optimisation itself is broken.

Ask it:

"Clear over clever. Give this back to me simply so my System 1 brain can easily process it."

Humans have progressed because we use communication to collaborate better than any other species.

If we're going to use AI to empower our future,
let's be mindful not to f**k that up.