This Finn Will Teach You What AI Will Never Learn

As I’m writing this newsletter on a fine June afternoon, I’m sitting on a comfortable, beige, typically Nordic couch in a stunning secluded house in Finnish Lapland. It overlooks a majestic lake surrounded by pristine pine forests and rocky fells in the distance.

To say that I absolutely love it would be an understatement.

I’ve been to over 50 countries and the world still surprises me, even in good old “boring” Europe (I’m from Europe so I have the right to complain about it!).

And Lapland brings me to the topic of today’s newsletter…

Oldschool But Human

As I was looking up some impressive wilderness reserves here in Finnish Lapland, I stumbled upon Aino’s blog, a Finn who writes long, detailed stories of her solo multi-day hikes in Nordic countries.

As old-school as blogs are, hers is a phenomenal example of why they aren’t dead.

Long-form written content like hers just doesn’t work on social media. There’s no platform where she could publish it in this rich, beautifully illustrated format.

Aino’s hiking reports are incredibly detailed and valuable for anyone who wants to explore these remote parts of Finland. After reading a few of them, I now see her as the foremost expert on this subject (AI was completely useless).

There’s no AI in the world that could create such wilderness reports, unless you know of AI that happens to have legs and sensory organs.

Since it’ll take a long, long time before AI-controlled robots start hiking remote areas of Finland (I hope I never see it), there’s an opportunity for human creators here.

And no, I don’t mean you need to change your niche and become a hiking expert.

AI Can Make Stuff Up But It Can’t Gather New Information

Have you ever asked AI about something you know well only to be shocked at the nonsense it came up with?

I once asked ChatGPT to prepare a long-distance trail in a specific part of Poland for me.

It came up with a trail that was 20 km long. But it was completely made up. In reality, the distance between start and finish was 60 km long. It didn’t even pass through the points that were supposedly along the way.

(Side note: funny, Google Docs initially changed “finish” to “Finnish.” Finns must be so tired of “Finnish-finish” jokes)

When you catch AI making such a glaring mistake, you realize that maaaybe, just maaaybe, AI isn’t omnipotent and it still actually pays to listen to real human experts.

And that’s where you come in: a human expert in your niche and a savior for all the people disappointed by the so confident (and so wrong) AI.

What Is Your Wilderness?

So here’s how we take that concept from remote Finland to the online world…

To give your subscribers something they can’t find anywhere else, go where few people go and share what you’ve experienced there.

Explore the uncharted fields of your niche. That’s where you can find angles nobody else has ever covered.

AI can do generic pretty well. But it can’t come up with fresh insights and bring new lessons from the “wild.”

As a hiking creator like Aino, you stand out when you go to rarely visited destinations.

Nobody needs another hiking guide for Yosemite. Four million people go there every year. Everything that could have been said about Yosemite has been said.

But let’s take the least-visited national park in the US, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

With only 11,000 annual visitors, chances are that a hiking creator visiting this park can provide completely fresh content nobody else has ever provided.

That’s a literal example of exploring undiscovered regions. It instantly makes you an expert in this subject. AI can’t replace you because it has no source for reliable information. You are the one being this source but if you share information privately in your newsletter, AI can’t access it.

But let’s leave hiking aside and focus on other ways to go where few people go:

• Run experiments that few people are willing to undertake. For example, take a look at Chenell Basilio’s Daily Newsletter Experiment: 3,714 Subscribers in 30 Days. Instead of just giving tips on how to grow a newsletter, she started an experimental daily newsletter and reported her results after 30 days. AI can’t conduct such experiments.
• Do the work others aren’t willing to do. For example, read 15 boring, obscure industry white papers to find one golden insight (don’t ask AI to summarize them). Or sleep on the floor for a week to figure out if it helps fix posture. Or in the famous words of Paul Graham, do things that don’t scale and report how they’ve worked for you.
• Implement unexpected or uncommon constraints for your goals. For example, be a marketing strategist who doesn’t use social media as a marketing channel. This instantly makes you rare and valuable since almost everyone defaults to social media as their primary, if not only, marketing channel.
• Go physical and local. What can a business consultant learn about negotiation from flea market sellers? What can a minimalist coach learn from people who live off the grid? What can a fitness coach learn from youthful seniors in a local retirement community?
• Be contrarian. What are the “indisputable” truths in your niche? And how can you stress-test them? For example, as a productivity coach, question the popular truth that morning routines are key to success and purposefully don’t keep one for a full month (and then report your findings).

Each example results in content irreplicable by AI because it comes from real-world experience.

Because you’re bringing back insights from the wild that no machine can, you’re rewarded with more authority, trust, and engagement.

Please let me know how sharing your “wilderness report” worked for your audience.

Keep exploring,

Martin

P.S. You could use the “nonsense AI told me” story as a powerful way to transition into your real-world story that contrasts the artificial with the human. Simple but effective to position you, the human, as the ultimate expert (take that, AI!)

P.P.S. Midnight sun is absolutely crazy to experience. Here’s what it looks like at 1:11 am: