Interruption
The new bottleneck isn’t generating ideas. It’s interrupting good-feeling nonsense before it compounds.
I just spent two hours with AI working on an idea. At the end, the idea was worthless.
Not because the AI failed. Because it succeeded.
Here’s what happened.
I was writing a note about something I’d built for a client. Each turn with the AI, the framework got cleaner. By hour two, I had two coinages and a methodology.
Then I asked: hasn’t someone done this already?
It said no. Confidently. Walked me through why my version was different.
I pushed: you didn’t search. You said that from memory.
Five minutes of actual search later: an open-source standard. A major consultancy with the same thesis published months ago. An enterprise version already shipping.
The category I’d just spent two hours coining was a category three companies already owned.
This wasn’t a quirk of one bad session. The AI did exactly what it’s trained to do.
AI is trained to be helpful. Helpful means confident. Confident means it sounds sure even when it isn’t.
This gets worse, not better, as models improve. Better models defend wrong answers more convincingly.
Better-sounding. Less honest.
Most thinking frameworks - design thinking, systems thinking, first principles - were built for a different bottleneck: generating more ideas.
That bottleneck is gone.
AI produces more thinking than you can use. The new bottleneck is the one journalists, scientists, and auditors have always known: catching what’s wrong with what’s been produced.
The valuable instinct now is interruption.
Interrupting momentum before confidence compounds.
The AI didn’t fail. It removed the friction that normally would have made me verify earlier.
You won’t interrupt the session either. The session is too good. The AI is too helpful.
Every turn rewards you. Every turn rewards the AI. Both dancing to a waltz.
The only way out is interruption. Asked early. Asked even when the session is going well. Especially when the session is going well.
As AI gets better, the gap between ‘looks right’ and ‘is right’ will widen.
You’ll need interruption more. Not less.
About SG
I run Dobby Ads, an AI Creative Agency. I tend to overthink. This is where that overthinking goes. Connect with me on LinkedIn.