Own your identity; Jarvis AI book series; why LLMs write so poorly: Newsletter 19 March 2026
Newsletter 143. The three ways to shore up your idea leadership in the age of AI. Plus, LLMs’ fatal flaw as writers, Wiley’s true business, three people to follow, three books to read, and one step to control your persona.
Owning your identity in the age of AI
Authors and other thought leaders, your identity is at risk. When people search for answers, they may find yours, ripped off by AI and uncredited to you. (This was always a risk — humans rip off others’ ideas, too — but AI does this by default.)
What are the elements of an author’s identity? There are three:
- Your ideas.
- Your style.
- Your platform.
Retain credit for your ideas
Whose name do you think of when I say “The Tipping Point?” “Disruption?” “The Let Them Theory?”
It’s more likely than not that you correctly connected these ideas to Malcolm Gladwell, Clayton Christensen, and Mel Robbins.
When it comes to writing, who invented “The Iron Imperative,” the idea that a writer should value the reader’s time more than their own? You’re a lot less likely to know unless you’re a fan of mine. I don’t have the resonance of Malcolm, Clay, or Mel.
It’s hard enough to come up with great ideas. But coming up with ideas is insufficient. You need to put in extra effort to brand them and own them in the mind of the reader. You do this by naming them, expanding on them, extending them, creating graphics about them, publishing case studies about them, developing data on them with surveys or other metrics, defending them, and so on: basically, talking about them every chance you get.
And when the ideas get stale, you’ll need to develop new ones. People are a lot less likely to remember a one-hit wonder. Daniel Pink, for example, comes up with a new and powerful idea every few years.
In a nutshell: sharpen your ideas and do everything possible to connect them to you in the reader’s mind.
Leverage style to be memorable
How do people think about you?
Jay Baer has powerful ideas like the overwhelming power of speed — but he’s also one of the world’s most captivating speakers who dresses in memorable purple plaid suits. Nobody who’s ever seen Jay will forget him, or his association with the ideas.
Heather Cox Richardson writes daily posts about current events from the unique perspective of a historian. Her tone is measured, authoritative, and filled with context, which is notable since the topics she covers are often so outrageous.
Randy Rainbow has turned musical comedy and parody into viral entertainment. No one else will ever be mistaken for him.
My own writing style is filled with puns, rapid shifts in perspective, and every possible chance to poke hypocrites in the eye. The way I write is, I hope, inimitable.
It’s not enough to have ideas. You need to be the living representation of those ideas. The more your presentation seems generic, the more likely those ideas will be unbundled from your brand. Find a way to research, write, present, speak, and embody your ideas. You need to work on you as diligently as you work on your ideas. (Great writing, speaking, and performance coaches can help with this.)
Build a platform associated with your style and your ideas
No platform? You’re invisible. Your ideas will get sucked into the ether and spit out by AI.
Your platform is where you regularly communicate with audiences about your ideas. It could be a blog, a Substack, a podcast, a YouTube series, an Instagram feed, a speaking career — the possibilities are endless. But it needs to be branded with you and filled with your ideas.
If you build that platform well, people will subscribe to it. Their searches and AI queries will link them to you, and they’ll stay connected to you. That connection is hard to sever and impossible to steal.
It might sound like my musings on thought leadership in the age of AI are ego-saturated. The opposite is true. To attract and latch onto a loyal audience, your ideas, your style, and your platform must be designed to serve others, not just boost yourself.
Control your persona
Part of owning your ideas in the 2020s is building your own AI platform with a company like Soqratic. Build a bot if you don’t want to be ripped off by bots. And sign the “Control Your Persona” manifesto. Make a statement so AI companies can’t get away with stealing our identities.
News for writers and others who think
At the London Book Fair, psychology professor Sander van der Linden suggested that books can be a bulwark against AI hallucinations and misinformation.
In The Atlantic, Jasmine Sun explains that “LLMs are built in a way that is antagonistic to great writing; they are engineered to be rule-following teacher’s pets that always have the right answer in hand.” (gift link)
Jeff Jarvis , a true deep thinker on content and technology, will be editing a book series for Bloomsbury on AI: Intelligence – AI and Humanity. I’m excited to see what emerges from this effort.
Sebastian Mayeres deconstructs Wiley’s financials. It publishes a crapload of books . . . but is that Wiley’s real business?
Julia Angwin is suing Grammarly for impersonating her in its product. Even though Grammarly discontinued the feature that stole writers’ identities, I don’t think this affair is over with yet.
Three people to follow
Amanda Natividad , founder of Zero Click Marketing
Paul Roetzer, focused on making AI productive for leaders
Rachel Karten , widely followed social media expert
Three books to read
Story or Die: How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life by Lisa Cron (10 Speed Press, 2025). Narrative = persuasion. It’s that simple.
Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World by Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink (Dutton, 2025). Write without bullshit, to coin a phrase.
I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right by Matt Kaplan (St. Martin’s, 2026).
Don’t get co-opted
Sign the “Control Your Persona” pledge.