AI works best at the extremes

Two things happened while I listened to a podcast yesterday.

The host said "listen to your body" — and an ad for Holland & Barrett spliced in, opening with a guided meditation, then selling supplements. Later she talked about sex and power and money. The next ad was for erectile dysfunction treatment.

The same episode, AI-transcribed, gave me sound effects in brackets. Footsteps. A door closing. The texture of the room. Things a deaf or hard of hearing listener/reader wouldn't otherwise get.

AI is at its best at the extremes, and somehow useless in the middle. Hyper-targeted manipulation on one end, real accessibility on the other.

The question isn't whether to use AI. It's which extreme we feed. Or maybe rather how we can get from the extremes to more of a middle ground.