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.