2025 Winner of In-Your-Face, Daily Deluge, Confusing Content

It’s Not Trump

In 2025, artificial intelligence dominated headlines and articles more significantly than coverage of Trump and his administration. Trump news was noisy and disturbing; yet, the narrative surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) was far more pervasive and multifaceted.

The sheer volume and variety of perspectives on AI, spanning existential concerns to transformative applications, made it a more “in your face” topic.

AI is the big winner of overwhelm because of the frequency and prominence of keywords and phrases within major news outlets, online publications, books, podcasts, and social media. I know one language, so my research measured content in English-speaking countries. AI-related terms like AGI, ethical AI, job displacement, AI regulation, and creative AI appeared in diverse contexts, from technology sections to business, culture, and local news.

It felt like Trump’s announcements, lies, distractions, and disregard for laws and humans were “in your face” the most. Not so. The discussions and writing about something not human—AI, was more exploratory in nature and covered every possible human perception and performance, not just politics.

Credit Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Sorting It Out With 100% Human Brain

Because there was no way to escape the overload of articles, questions, research, opinions, more questions, and then more questions about AI, everyone will have a story.

Yes, I’m talking about you. And the horse you rode in on. And the person next to you. All of y’all. That’s why there is a comments section for every story I write (for your 2 cents worth). What are you thinking? What is your AI point of view? You know where to find my email address if you want to speak your mind, privately.

Using only my brain and no AI tools or tricks, here are the articles I noticed and set aside to show you the way I’m making sense of where AI landed in 2025.

Because I am a journalist and this is a community for professionals from every field, I tend to put more credibility and faith in what comes from investigative journalists, scientists, and others who are objective (without a dog in the fight, without taking money from AI companies).

Winner – The Art of the Painfully Obvious

Investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr, London, writes The Great AI Bubble Yes, it’s a bubble. And yes, it’s going to burst. Welcome to the Great AI Bubble, a metastasized trillion-dollar tech tumour so massive it’s practically visible from space.

If you haven’t heard of this yet, it’s not because you’re not paying attention. It’s because the media is part of the same mystical amalgam of bullshit and vibes that’s keeping the whole thing afloat, a circular economy of access journalism and tech hyperbole that masks something stinking and rotten at its core: OpenAI.

The bubble around LLMs and AI is really something to behold. I’ve been in the investment business since 1982, and I have never seen anything remotely like it.

Winner – Why Should I Care and Who’s Tracking This?

I write for specific audiences that expect me to sort out the crapload of too much information, and ask questions they might. That’s why every story steps into one or more of these major topic areas: Professions. Communication. Gifted Adults. Life & Grief.

Please drill down with me into every piece of content to look for answers to these questions.

What is the intersection of AI with professionals?

What is the intersection of AI with communicators?

What is the intersection of AI with adults with exceptional talents or who identify as gifted (as in Everyday Genius gifted)?

Where does AI get into the 100% human experiences of life and grief?

We can cut across several thousand professions by looking at who is tracking AI for professional associations. So far, the winner is Angela Shelton, Answers for Associations and Belinda Moore, Strategic Membership Solutions.

If the profession you represent or the profession you’ve been practicing for years is heavy into these areas, AI will invade sooner than later.

Computer & Mathematical Professions

Office & Administrative Support

Sales & Customer Support

Writing, Editing & Content Development

Translators & Interpreters

Education, Training & Coaching

Legal Support & Analysis

Marketing & PR

Financial Services

For all businesses and non-profit organizations, the Harvard Business Review Analytic Services researches to understand how organizations are thinking about agentic AI, and understand if they’re planning to use it or not. 3 Ways AI Is Changing How Companies Work (January 2025) remained top dog all year.

Credit Darius Bashar on Unsplash

Winner – First and Last Word About AI for Writers

Two journalists and authors tie for top honors in the category of writers and human thinkers.

Rachel Jepsen, The Philosophy of Writing, and especially her article A-I-A-I-O: Artificial writing and philosophies of alienation

Writing is the relationship you have with yourself. Artificial writing weakens the bond between you and your writing and you and yourself as a writer. Artificial writing, writing without a body, without land, without ecology, without experience, without connection, without empathy, without any feeling at all, is not writing because it does not have perspective–these things come from the body in the world that lives and survives with, through, and for others. Human writing–real writing–comes from the heart, it flows through us to someone, it is from us and for them. Writing without feeling–without a body–is propaganda

Derek Thompson The End of Thinking. The rise of AI’s “thinking” machines is not the problem. The decline of thinking people is.

In the last few months, top AI executives and thinkers have offered an eerily specific and troubling prediction about how long it will be before artificial intelligence takes over the economy. The message is:  “You Have 18 Months.”

I am much more concerned about the decline of today’s thinking people than I am about the rise of tomorrow’s thinking machines.

Winner – Deep Dive Research Explained in Words We Can Understand

Edward Zitron, The Enshittifinancial Crisis

If you prefer one hour instead of several days of reading many books and way too many articles, I recommend this long essay. It’s like a bikini in that it covers the essentials tastefully while giving you a lot of exposure to the most interesting bits.

Zitron’s article includes conversations that were popular in 2025 across many other attempts to make sense of the chaos, such as..

The Devil’s Deal Of Investing in AI Startups

The Upcoming Data Center Disaster

The AI Bubble is A Debt and Venture Bubble, And Will Burst When Both Run Out

What Does the Future Look Like?

Zitron is thorough, humble, and real when he says… The AI bubble is an inflation of capital and egos, of people emboldened and outright horny over the prospect of millions of people’s livelihoods being automated away. It is a global event where we’ve realized how the global elite are just as stupid and ignorant as anybody you’d meet on the street — Business Idiots that couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag, empowered by other Business Idiots that desperately need to believe that everything will grow forever.

I want to be clear that there is very little that separates you from the people running these companies, or many analysts. I have taught myself everything I know from scratch, and I believe you can too, and I hope I have been able to and will be able to teach you everything I know, which is why everything I write is so long. Well, that and I’m working out what I’m going to say as I write it.