A Preview from the Cutting Room Floor

What follows is a sample from my new book-in-progress, Unclonable—a 30-day, real-time writing project unpacking how we remain credible, creative, and human in the age of AI. I’m sharing a sample essay here as both a public draft and an invitation: to think alongside me, to critique, to subscribe, and to join the work while it’s still alive.

Coherence over credentials

What happens to credibility when anyone can sound like an expert?

A few years ago, I noticed a woman on LinkedIn who claimed she worked at my organization. She hadn’t. I recognized her from Buffalo’s small opera scene, where reputations are tight-knit and memory is long. Our workplace has had fewer than twenty employees over its lifetime; the idea that she’d passed through unnoticed seemed improbable. I did some digging.

According to her profile, she’d held more than fifty jobs, seven of them current. She was a model. A Harvard graduate. An expert in several fields. And yet, her stint at my workplace? A single afternoon serving as a volunteer grant panelist. Her modeling career? Pay-to-play spreads in vintage pin-up zines. Harvard? A weekend conference a decade ago. On paper, she was illustrious. In reality, it was vapor—a collection of loosely-connected experiences reframed as a professional tour de force. Was she lying? Not exactly. Was she credible? Not quite.

And yet, I couldn’t blame her.

We’re taught to amplify. To squeeze maximum value from every opportunity. To construct an image that sells. Early in my own career, a well-meaning advisor once boasted that I had a four-page CV before I’d even earned my bachelor’s degree. It included a phantom paper presentation and padded academic entries. A Master’s thesis lauded with departmental awards—never mind that I was the only eligible candidate that year. Today, I’m labeled an award-winning, Harvard-educated AI expert. In truth? I completed half of a part-time master’s program and left with a certificate. My awards often had more to do with positioning than excellence. My expertise began not with recognition but with curiosity and persistence.

So I ask myself: am I so different from the opera singer?

If we’re all optimizing our narratives, where does authority actually come from?

We’ve all been using AI for longer than we realize. ATMs scanning checks. Predictive text in emails. Facial filters to smooth skin and whiten teeth. I started working with generative AI in earnest in 2018. By the time ChatGPT launched publicly in late 2022, I was ready—and unimpressed. Within five minutes, I had pushed it to failure. But I saw its promise immediately: an on-demand assistant, a second brain, a research tool. A way to move faster, think wider, see patterns.

In March 2023, I joked over prosecco with my husband that I should launch a consulting business—as a bit. The next day, I built Nero Strategies Group LLC entirely with AI. ChatGPT created my brand, my business plan, even my executive assistant: a nonbinary intern named River Cameron, imagined by the model itself. River wrote my web copy, managed my social presence, and helped me publish a book in 30 days. It wasn’t perfect, but it was plausible. It was a beginning. I still reviewed every post, every document, every idea. I was the strategist. River was the intern.

This is where human expertise fits in. Not in doing all the work ourselves, but in deciding how the work gets done. Are you guiding the tool, or deferring to it? Are you the strategist or the executor? Are you the author of your ideas or just the presenter of a machine’s output?

There is danger in outsourcing too much. If AI becomes the brain, and we are merely its hands, we become its avatars—not its collaborators. Intelligence shifts from being embodied to being simulated. Discernment disappears.

And discernment is everything.

Generative AI is elegant, yes. But it is not refined. Its taste is basic. Its optimism is relentless. It rarely anticipates failure—a distinctly human trait. It hallucinates. It predicts. It fills in the blanks. But it doesn’t know in the way an experienced professional knows.

I think about the printer in my building—a man who knows his craft. He speaks of color codes, paper textures, software quirks with the precision of someone who’s made the same mistake a thousand times. That’s expertise. Depth. Context. Nuance. Ask ChatGPT to design a print ad, and it won’t flag the wrong file format until you tell it to. Ask my printer, and he sees it instantly.

That’s the difference. Not just knowledge, but intuition. Pattern recognition married to memory. Human intelligence is layered with texture. AI’s is smooth and flattened.

So yes, I have a Harvard certificate and some AI clout. But the work is mine. The failures are mine. The discernment—hard-earned, imperfect, and deeply human—is mine. And that is something no model can fake.

Authority is no longer about credentials. It’s about coherence. Can you stand behind your voice? Do your ideas connect? Are your decisions consistent? Can you take responsibility for what you create—whether or not AI helped you build it?

In an era of synthetic polish, human coherence is the new authority. And that cannot be cloned.

If this resonated with you, I invite you to subscribe to Unclonable, where I’m writing my next book in real time—one chapter per day, for 30 days. It’s a field guide for professionals navigating the shift. Free subscribers receive curated essays and reflections. Paid subscribers get early access to full chapters, behind-the-scenes commentary, and the raw process of building thought leadership in an AI-saturated world.

If you know someone who still believes in discernment, share this.

We are living the transition. Let’s lead it with clarity.