Gatekeepers

Gatekeepers have always had a niche.

When I started working at GE building satellites in the early 90s, it was pre-internet, and for the most part, pre-digitized data. Finding information was hard. 

You had to know the gatekeepers. 

The gatekeepers were the ones who held the information. They held the Texas Instruments and Motorola databooks, the software syntax books, and the filing cabinets full of engineering drawings, data, and reports.

The gatekeepers knew and relished their value in this market of information. Some even had a “check-out” system like a library. 

Then, along came computers and the internet. Within a few years, the shelves full of books and filing cabinets full of paper no longer mattered.

The information gatekeepers lost their business model. 

But gatekeepers never really disappear. They just evolve.

And now AI is the latest in the long line of gatekeepers. 

AI decides what answers you get.

AI drafts the responses you never wrote.

AI filters, suggests, corrects, ranks.

AI holds the keys now. But to which doors?