The text and images AI-based tools generate are often very fluid. But hidden in that fluidity is a vacuity that may escape the unobservant among us. YouTube, for example, now has a feature that will both recommend videos you should make (based on what has worked till now) and what those videos should contain (based on the LLM that it sits on).

So if you are a cookery channel that has made a video on making an omelette and that video has done well, YouTube might recommend that you make more omelette videos and even what those videos should contain.

But this recipe doesn't work when it comes to videos that cannot or should not be repeated. I recently made a video on the lessons that I had learned in 2024. It did slightly better than some of my other recent videos and YouTube decided to recommend that I make more such videos. It even created an outline for me to use.

There are several problems with this. Let's start with the obvious ones first.

You can't make some videos over and over again. A year-ender like mine is something that only has value because of what it is - a collection of lessons at the end of 12 months of lived life. You can't grow a reputation as a guy who makes videos about what he learned in 2024. If your mother dies and you make an emotional video about it and it does well, what are you going to do when YouTube recommends that you make more such videos because that is what is working? Milk a personal tragedy for views?

- 10 things to do when your mother dies

- Did your dead mother keep secrets from you?

- Is your neighbour's mother about to die?

- The dead mother crisis. What you need to know

- Psychic secret! I tried speaking with my dead mother

It's not unheard of, but it is probably not the greatest of ideas if you care about looking like a decent human being in the eyes of your subscribers.

YouTube's inspiration tab can't tell the difference, so you have to.

Next, I can't make a video about what life taught me based on what YouTube recommends in its outline. Those are not the things life taught me. And YouTube cannot know what life taught me. To be sure, it is possible to do some googling and come up with a list of things you should say in a 'what I learned in 2024' video. But the internet is full of videos that are the result of nothing but googling (and, increasingly, WhatsApp forwards). You don't need to add another one to that list. Especially if you care about anything more than views.

The next problem is somewhat less obvious. YouTube's suggested outline seems to be an average of all that it has learned about what such videos usually contain. It literally contains phrases like "protecting mental and emotional well-being" and "focusing on achievable targets". These are what many rationalists talk about when they talk about astrology and and try to explain why it seems accurate to some people. The things YouTube is giving me are the AI equivalent of Barnum Statements. They apply more or less to everyone and will occur to most people who think of the year gone by.

There is no dearth of personal growth channels on YouTube. They all say more or less the same things. Many of them take audits of their lives at the end of the year. Many of them come to the same inevitable conclusions. Giving more time to friends and family for example, and working harder and being more focused and having resilience and all that. These LLMs have all been trained on these videos. What they give you is going to be an average of all they have been trained on.

Average! Remember that word.

It's not going to be something new, it's no going to be something that has never been seen before, it's not going to be something unique in terms of your lived experience. It's going to be an average of all that has happened so far.

It's not that I am saying having such a suggested outline has no use. I am however saying that it is not going to be any use to you if your goal is to bring something new into this world or create something that has not been created so far. Those who have built content farms that are irrigated with big data and fertilised by tried and tested formats may very well find a use for YouTube's Inspiration tab, but you need to really consider if that is the road you want to take.

I for one, am sure that I don't.