AI Can Organize Knowledge, but It Doesn’t Know What Matters to You
In the age of AI, organizing information is no longer scarce. Feed AI a pile of material, and within seconds it can summarize the key points, outline a structure, or even produce a decent article.
But there’s one thing about what AI produces: it treats everything equally. It doesn’t know which idea resonated deeply with you, which experience mirrors your own situation, or which concept shifted the way you think.
In other words, AI can process information, but it doesn’t know what that knowledge means to you.
If you feel anxious about AI’s development — feeling like AI can do so many things and wondering what’s left for you — I think this is actually a chance to see things more clearly. Once AI handles the tedious work of organizing information, what truly matters becomes easier to see: your perspective, your judgment, your lived experience.
These are things AI cannot generate for you. Because it hasn’t lived your life.
Perspectives Need Knowledge as Evidence; Knowledge Needs Perspectives to Have Value
There’s an easy point of confusion here: when people hear “share your perspective,” they often think having opinions alone is enough.
Not quite. Pure opinions without grounding tend to be hollow. Sharing a perspective still needs to be backed by knowledge and reasoning to truly hold weight.
But the reverse is also true — purely organizing knowledge no longer holds unique value, because AI can do it faster and more thoroughly.
What’s truly valuable is the output you create after filtering and recombining knowledge through your own experience and judgment.
Here’s a simple test: if you separate the creator from the work and the work’s value stays the same — AI can replace you. But if separating the person from the work causes the value to drop — that’s where you’re irreplaceable.
A generic productivity article reads the same no matter who writes it. But an article written by someone you’ve followed for years, drawing from the path they’ve actually walked — that’s different. Their judgment, their taste, the choices they’ve made are all woven into it.
If you’re struggling with “what value can I still offer,” try thinking about it this way: among the things you do, which ones lose value when you’re separated from the work? That’s the direction you should invest in.
How Are Perspectives Formed?
AI can help you organize knowledge, but if you don’t articulate your perspective, AI has no way of knowing what it is — it can only infer your thoughts from the materials you’ve collected.
So the key question is: when and how do you “contribute your perspective”?
I break this process into three stages:
Stage One: Receiving and Digesting
When you encounter a source — an article, a book, a video — AI can do the initial organizing and summarizing. But more importantly, after you’ve gone through the content yourself, certain parts will strike a chord.
AI records all the key points equally, but what truly matters is what this knowledge means to you — what you thought was well said, where you disagree, what reminded you of your own experience. Start inputting your perspective at this stage, and every step that follows will have clearer direction.
Stage Two: Organizing and Condensing
Take the thoughts you’ve collected and organize them, turning scattered sparks of inspiration into structured notes. This is the first fusion of your perspective with others’ — you’re selecting which knowledge is worth recording, which ideas resonate with you, and how different sources connect.
AI can assist with initial synthesis, but the final perspective must come from you. Each time you add your own insights to these notes, your perspective gets condensed one more time. This process makes contributing perspective incremental — you don’t need to synthesize all the complexity at once, but can generate ideas more naturally at different stages.
Stage Three: Transforming and Sharing
From these thoughts and your perspective, create the content you want to express — an article, a story, a product. The focus is on how you choose to convey knowledge and perspective to others.
At this point, your perspective no longer lives only in your notes — it takes the form of content or projects that create real impact.
These Three Stages Are Meaningful in Themselves
I think “meaning” can be broken into two parts: a sense of progress and a sense of contribution.
Sense of progress: as you digest others’ views, form your own ideas, and let your perspective mature — this process itself makes you feel like you’re moving forward.
Sense of contribution: when you turn your perspective into content or projects, sharing them with others and creating impact — that’s the moment your effort becomes meaningful to others too.
The entire process is itself an act of creating meaning. Value doesn’t begin only at the moment you hit “publish” — it starts from the moment you choose what to pay attention to.
When Expertise Ceases to Exist, What Remains Is Interest
Taking this one step further: if AI keeps advancing, the concept of “expertise” may become increasingly blurred. When everyone can achieve expert-level output through AI, expertise itself is no longer a moat.
So what’s left?
I think things will become increasingly pure — what remains is interest. The things you genuinely want to explore, the directions you can’t stop learning about, the work you’d still do even without being paid.
When the gap in professional knowledge is leveled by AI, your unique curiosity becomes the most important differentiator. Not because AI doesn’t understand those topics, but because it hasn’t lived those experiences. AI can analyze your perspective, but it can’t think from your vantage point; it can mimic your style, but it has never truly cared about anything; it can process information, but it can’t decide “what matters and what doesn’t” — because it doesn’t have a real life.
So finding your value in the AI era isn’t about looking outward — learning more skills, chasing more trends. It’s about looking inward — figuring out what you truly care about, what your experiences have taught you, and what you want to say to the world.
Sometimes, how you do something matters more than what you do. The mindset you bring to organizing, sharing, and creating determines what these acts mean — both to you and to others.
Then, say it out loud.