write well so that the memory lottery system remembers you
We're accidentally deciding what future generations will know!
Last week, I decided to test something that both thrilled and terrified me. I asked ChatGPT about Inclov, a startup I co-founded years ago; the world's first dating app for people with disabilities. I wasn't sure what to expect. After all, Inclov was a small initiative from India, something I built with passion but limited resources.
But then something magical happened.
ChatGPT knew everything. It recognised Inclov as "the world's first matchmaking platform specifically designed for people with disabilities and health disorders." It knew I launched it on January 21, 2016. It remembered how it grew from an offline matchmaking agency called Wanted Umbrella that I started in Mumbai in 2014. It even knew about our "Social Spaces" feature and how we were creating thousands of connections in the differently-abled community.
For a moment, I felt this profound sense of achievement. Here was this small initiative that I had poured my heart into, and it was going to live forever in the collective memory of AI systems. Not because I had millions in marketing budget or perfect SEO, but because someone had taken the time to properly document it on Wikipedia.
What struck me most wasn't just that AI remembered Inclov, it was that Inclov achieved a form of digital immortality I never anticipated. The startup shut down in 2019, its app no longer exists, and the team has moved on to other ventures. Yet here it was, living on in the collective memory of AI systems, potentially influencing conversations about accessibility and inclusion for decades to come.
In that moment, I realised we're witnessing something unprecedented in human history: the creation of a digital consciousness that may outlast our physical existence. My work on Inclov, the problems we solved, the community we built, the impact we created has become part of a vast, interconnected knowledge system that will shape how future generations understand disability, technology, and human connection.
But then came the irony that perfectly captures our current moment.
Right after that, I asked ChatGPT about newsletters exploring AI and the human future; exactly what I write about now with The Third Frontier here. Despite weeks of building this platform and developing thoughtful content about AI's impact on society, my current work didn't appear anywhere in the response.
My newsletter is invisible because I made a deliberate choice. When I set up my substack, I specifically disabled AI training on my content. I wanted to protect my ideas and ensure proper attribution for my work.
My old startup lives on in AI memory because it's documented on Wikipedia. My current newsletter, despite being more recent and arguably more relevant, doesn't exist in AI's world because I chose to protect it from being used as training data.
This personal contradiction embodies the central tension of our time: the very creators producing the highest quality content are opting out of the systems that could amplify their reach, while AI models hungry for good sources are left to train on whatever remains accessible.
We're witnessing the most significant shift in brand visibility since the invention of the internet and the choices we make about AI training today will determine which voices shape tomorrow's conversations.
The Great Brand Disappearance
Think about the last time you asked ChatGPT or Claude a question instead of googling it. The AI gave you a confident, well-structured answer. But here's what you probably didn't notice: dozens of brands that should have been part of that conversation were completely absent.
We're witnessing the emergence of a new kind of visibility crisis. Brands that spent decades perfecting their Google rankings are discovering they're invisible to the AI systems that are increasingly becoming our primary information sources.
The rules have changed overnight and most brands don't even know they need to play a different game.
The Problems No One Saw Coming
The Attribution Mystery
Imagine someone asks ChatGPT "best project management software" and gets a thoughtful recommendation that mentions your product positively. A week later, that person signs up using direct traffic to your website. How do you connect those dots Traditional marketing attribution is already complex, but AI creates an entirely new blind spot. The influence happens in conversations we can't see, through mentions we can't track, in contexts we don't understand. It's like having billboards in a parallel universe—they're working, but you have no idea which ones.
The Content Creator's Dilemma
You remember I mentioned earlier that when I set up my Substack for The Third Frontier, I specifically chose not to allow AI training on my content. I want to control how my ideas are used and ensure proper attribution. But this creates a weird paradox. Quality content creators like myself are opting out of AI training to protect our work. Meanwhile, AI models desperately need high-quality sources to give good answers. This means AI systems are increasingly relying on whatever content they can access which isn't necessarily the best content.
This results in a potential race to the bottom in AI training data, while the most thoughtful voices become invisible to the systems shaping how people discover information.
The Digital Memory Paradox
This very tension reveals something deeper about human consciousness in the AI age. We're creating external memory systems that may be more permanent and influential than our own biological memories. Think about this: I can barely remember what I had for lunch last Tuesday, but AI systems will remember every detail about Inclov for potentially decades.
What does it mean for human identity when our digital traces, the content we create, the problems we solve, the communities we build become more lasting than our physical presence? Are we inadvertently creating a form of consciousness that's disconnected from human experience, one that remembers facts but not feelings, achievements but not struggles?
The unsettling part is that by choosing to protect our current work from AI training, we might be ensuring that only our past selves; the versions of us that existed when we were less cautious about digital privacy gets to influence the future. The most thoughtful, privacy-conscious creators are essentially removing themselves from tomorrow's collective memory.
The Sourcing Issues
Research shows that AI models only cite about half the sources that appear in Google's top results. This means there's an entirely hidden layer of influence happening. Content that never ranks well in traditional search might be heavily cited by AI, while SEO-optimised content might be completely ignored. Brands are discovering their perfect SEO strategies are worthless in the AI world, while competitors they've never considered are dominating AI conversations.
Irrelevant Websites?
Every website built for the SEO era needs fundamental changes to work in the AI era. Those keyword-stuffed, technically optimised but utterly boring business websites? AI models find them as tedious as humans do.
The websites that succeed with AI prioritise clear structure, authoritative citations, and genuinely helpful, unique content over keyword density. It's forcing brands to choose between gaming the old system and succeeding in the new one.
Companies like Profound (AI brand monitoring) and Goodie (AI optimisation platform) are already helping brands audit how their websites appear to AI systems, revealing gaps that traditional SEO tools never caught.
The Personalisation Hangups
Traditional SEO had rules you could learn and follow. AI optimisation feels like trying to hit a target that's constantly moving. Every AI model prioritises different signals. ChatGPT values semantic depth, while Perplexity emphasises structured data. Gemini takes a trust-first approach that's different from both.
Add personalisation to the mix where every user gets different results based on their conversation history and optimising for AI becomes like trying to optimise for a million different search engines simultaneously.
Reactive Monitoring
Right now, most AI monitoring tools like Otterly can only tell you what happened after the fact. They're digital historians, not soothsayers. You can see that your brand was mentioned (or wasn't), but you can't influence the outcome in real-time.
Some platforms are beginning to offer "retrospective analysis"; studying what content gets cited and helping brands create more of that type. But this is reactive and needs active brainstorming for a more sustainable solution.
It's like having a smoke detector that only beeps after your house has already burned down but the house in question isn't just a business, it's human memory itself.
What’s Actually Working?
Given these profound implications for human consciousness and agency, what strategies are actually emerging for those willing to navigate this new landscape?
The Wikipedia Effect
Smart brands are realising that contributing to Wikipedia isn't just good citizenship, it's strategic AI positioning. AI models heavily rely on Wikipedia for factual information. Having your brand properly represented there, with solid citations and neutral point-of-view content, is like owning prime real estate in the AI training data universe.
The same principle applies to publishing research on Google Scholar. Academic papers and well-cited research appear disproportionately in AI responses when people ask for authoritative information.
Semantic Proximity Engineering
Here's a technique that sounds complex but is brilliantly simple. Rand Fishkin discovered that Sparktoro appears first in AI responses for "audience research software" not because of traditional SEO, but because that exact phrase appears next to his company name across dozens of bios and articles online.
The proximity of words in training data matters more than backlinks or domain authority. Brands are starting to think strategically about what phrases they want to appear next to their name across all their content and partnerships.
But these strategies raise a fundamental question about human agency in an AI-shaped world. Are we creating a system where meaningful participation in shaping collective knowledge requires surrendering intellectual property rights? Where is the choice between digital relevance and creative control?
Consider the broader implications: if only those willing to feed their ideas into AI training systems get to influence how future generations understand our current moment, we're essentially creating a new form of digital inequality. Not based on access to technology, but on willingness to sacrifice ownership of ideas for the chance at digital immortality.
This could fundamentally alter human creativity itself. Will future creators optimise their work not for human understanding and connection, but for AI comprehension and citation? Are we moving toward a world where the most influential human voices are those that speak in the language machines prefer?
What’s Next?
Understanding these existential implications helps us see why the emerging solutions aren't just about marketing tactics; they're about participating in the construction of collective human memory.
Unified AI Optimisation: Instead of managing separate strategies for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, the winning platforms will offer unified optimisation across all AI systems. Think of it like having one dashboard that shows how your brand appears across every AI model, with recommendations tailored to each system's preferences.
Real-Time Content Adaptation: The next evolution goes beyond monitoring to active optimisation. Imagine content that automatically adjusts based on how AI systems are currently interpreting and citing it. Not quite there yet, but companies like Daydream and Profound are building the foundation for this future.
AI Relationship Management: We're witnessing the birth of an entirely new category: managing your brand/personal relationship with AI systems. Just like we have customer relationship management and partner relationship management, brands and key figures will need AI relationship management.
This isn't just about visibility; it's about ensuring AI systems understand your story, position you accurately against competitors, and represent your value proposition correctly in the millions of conversations they have about your industry.
The Existential Question That Shapes Our Species
If AI becomes the primary way people discover and understand brands (and ideas), what happens to the companies that built their entire digital presence around being found by Google? More importantly, what happens to the quality of information people receive if the best content creators opt out of training AI systems, while lower-quality content remains available?
These business questions reveal something far more profound. The choices we're making today about AI training, content protection, and digital participation aren't just business decisions—they're existential ones. We're not simply deciding which brands survive in the digital economy; we're determining what kinds of human voices, experiences, and wisdom get to influence the future of our species.
If AI becomes the primary lens through which future generations understand our current moment, then our decisions about what to share and what to protect are essentially acts of curation for human consciousness itself. We're choosing which aspects of human experience and knowledge deserve to persist in the collective digital memory.
My startup Inclov lives on in AI systems not because it was the most successful company I built but because someone decided it was worth documenting on Wikipedia.
This randomness or this digital lottery system means that future AI systems might have detailed knowledge about some human endeavours while remaining completely ignorant about others that were equally meaningful but less well-documented.
We're not just watching a shift in marketing tactics. We're witnessing a fundamental change in how knowledge, authority, and brand perception are formed in our society. The question that keeps me awake isn't just about marketing attribution or brand visibility. It's this:
In a world where AI systems increasingly mediate human knowledge and decision-making, who gets to be remembered? Whose ideas shape the future? And what happens to human creativity, agency, and consciousness when the price of digital immortality is surrendering control over our own thoughts?
We're architecting the memory systems that will define human knowledge for generations to come. The brands and creators that figure this out first won't just win market share; they'll help determine which aspects of human wisdom and experience survive in our collective digital consciousness.
The Third Frontier isn't just where technology meets humanity—it's where we decide what it means to be human in a world increasingly shaped by artificial minds.
Signing off,
Kalyani Khona
P.S. As I finish writing this newsletter, I'm sitting with a profound contradiction. I've chosen to protect this content from AI training to maintain creative control, yet I've just spent 2,000 words arguing for the importance of AI visibility. Perhaps this tension is exactly where the most important conversations about human agency and digital consciousness need to begin. What would you choose, protecting your ideas or ensuring they influence the future? The answer might reveal more about human nature than we're ready to admit.
