I wouldn’t necessarily read a lengthy blog post either just because some friend recommended it to me, and conversely I wouldn’t expect a friend to necessarily read it if I was recommending it without being prompted for recommendations. There needs to be some additional incentive and/or interest.

Also, I’m reading this comment thread instead of TFA because I didn’t find the previous part I read that great. And I’m not an AI proponent, more of an AI skeptic.

I didn't provide much context but, 1) I've had deep conversations with these friends for years based on long articles or videos, and 2) I recommend maybe one or two long form items per year and they used to always review them without, "TLDR?"

So my main concern here is that my experience may be a microcosm of the shallowing of discussions correlated with some people's increased use of AI. That worries me.

It's more of a meta point to me. I get that this series isn't landing for some people, yourself included, but the meta-observation is that given something of roughly equal substantiveness as before, these friends' motivations for long form content and discussion seem to have atrophied, perhaps largely due to the addition of the AI summary reality cipher to their lives.

Of course, correlation isn't causation. Maybe they both just got older and more lazy, but given their reliance on AI summaries in other debates happening recently, I'm worried.

Be aware that you do not overestimate one single data point. They also might be super busy right now etc.

Agreed, correlation isn't causation but two people on the same day with the same response that had never responded like that before, so something I'm keeping a watch for...