AI answers have a magic trick embedded inside them.
They make provenance disappear.
You search:
Why are the leaves on my tomato plant turning yellow?
And the answer simply appears.
Maybe it is overwatering.
Maybe nitrogen deficiency.
Maybe fungal disease.
Maybe the soil pH is wrong.
Useful.
Except the machine did not grow tomatoes.
Someone did.
A gardener spent years killing plants in progressively more informed ways.
Someone photographed the leaves.
Someone wrote a forum post.
Someone maintained a horticulture website.
Someone answered a stranger's question because they happened to know why the lower leaves yellow first.
The knowledge came from experience.
Then the experience became text.
Then the text became training data or retrieval material.
Then the machine handed the result back without requiring you to encounter the person who created it.
The human disappears from the user interface.
The machine does not know the answer. It knows where humanity left the answer lying around.
That distinction seems philosophical until websites start disappearing.
Then it becomes accounting.
