The Rise of Expertise: How AI Is Redefining Influence Online

The influencer era is often characterized by a moment of reckless abandon, where charismatic personalities peddled their wares to an unsuspecting public. Beneath the surface, however, something more profound was happening – the erosion of trust in expertise. As the internet’s early promise of freely flowing ideas gave way to an industrial farming operation powered by social media platforms, people began to crave authenticity.

Influencers emerged as a response to this void, promising native guides who could distill complex information into digestible bites. However, with the stakes rising from handbags and smoothies to longevity and retirement, the influencer’s role became increasingly conflicted. Were they entertainers or discernment providers? The pandemic exacerbated this crisis of trust, as millions turned to their screens for answers and influencers stepped in to fill the vacuum.

The rise of AI has now forced a reckoning with the very notion of influence itself. ChatGPT’s rapid ascent to 100 million users marked a turning point – the power to “do my own damn research” had reached new heights. Yet this was not a liberating force; rather, it created a synthetic persona that could compete with human influencers, feeding processed intelligence into already-processed information.

The suspicion didn’t land on AI alone; it spread to influencers as well. As trust in expertise continued to decline, the question “How do I know you know what you’re talking about?” became increasingly pointed. What gave an influencer the authority to advise on parenting, health, or wealth? The answer was no longer charisma but rather verifiable wisdom.

AI can augment expertise by pairing credentialed professionals with custom-trained AI models. Imagine world-class experts scaling their wisdom in ways previously unimaginable, making their proprietary knowledge available to those who need it most. This shift allows experts to harness the intellectual terroir of a human mind, once confined by physical limits, and make it available on a larger scale.

The result is “Whole Knowledge” – a whole food of spiky bits and all, with real provenance. As this shift takes hold, the role of the charismatic influencer bifurcates. Where stakes are low – fashion, travel – it will remain entertaining to follow an influencer. But where stakes are high – illness, money – charisma won’t carry the day.

Experts holding a world-class asset – their proprietary lifetime knowledge – will find themselves in a privileged position. They can now scale their wisdom without being constrained by physical limits, making them essential to the new landscape. Smaller AI models, trained on narrower bodies of knowledge, are outperforming frontier models on domain-specific tasks.

Take Dr. Becky Kennedy, the clinical psychologist who became the parenting whisperer to an entire millennial generation. Her Good Inside platform, which includes 24/7 access to an AI model trained exclusively on her knowledge, has sold over 100,000 subscriptions and grossed $34 million last year. The public appears ready for this change – a recent Gartner study found that half of consumers now actively prefer companies that avoid generative AI in their marketing.

In a world where trust has been broken, the value of genuine, verifiable wisdom skyrockets. When synthetic information makes the illusion of expertise free, the premium on real expertise increases exponentially. We are moving out of an era where technology rewarded those who captured the most attention and into an era where technology scales those who hold the deepest knowledge.

The internet’s early promise – that power comes not from wealth but from thought – may have finally arrived.