Alexander Arvidsson

You think ChatGPT is ’thinking’? It’s rolling dice, one token at a time. LLMs don’t plan, reason, or understand: they sample from probability distributions based on statistical patterns. Worse, if you’re working in Swedish, Arabic, or most non-English languages, you’re getting a fundamentally degraded product due to tokenization bias. And as these models increasingly train on their own outputs, they’re collapsing into irreversible mediocrity. Understanding what’s actually happening changes everything.

Research shows measurable cognitive decline after just four months of LLM use. Like GPS destroyed our spatial navigation abilities, AI is atrophying our thinking. Here’s what the science reveals, the warning signs you’re in too deep, why organizations should be terrified, and what we can do about it.

LLMs are sophisticated pattern-matching engines, not thinking machines. Our hardwired tendency to anthropomorphize combined with dopamine-driven addiction pathways is changing how we interact with these tools. Understanding what they actually are is the first step to using them wisely.

From Michael Jordan’s lucky shorts to my pre-talk routines: rituals help performers access their best state. While ‘power posing’ science failed, the psychology of consistent pre-performance routines holds up. Discover why rituals work, how they create mental anchors, and the three specific rituals that help me deliver better presentations.

Sugar went from luxury to ubiquitous poison before we understood what it was doing to us. We’re doing the exact same thing with AI, adding it to everything without genuine use cases while it erodes literacy and critical thinking. By the time we realize what we’ve lost, the infrastructure will already be built.

The ‘Angel’s Cocktail’ story about releasing hormones through storytelling is popular, but the real mechanisms are richer and more useful. Learn what’s actually happening when you hook your audience—and how understanding attention, memory, and cognitive tension makes you a better speaker.

A new city, a new country, and a new session - so many firsts in Hungary!

‘The Untruthful Art’ is back for 2025, completely revamped for our AI-driven misinformation era. With 59% of shared links never clicked and AI presenting statistical hallucinations as facts, data literacy has never been more critical. I’m updating with modern examples: AI benchmarks, social media dynamics, election polling, and climate data manipulation.