I Hope I'm Wrong

This book was partly written by an artificial intelligence. I need you to know that up front, because if I buried it in the acknowledgements you'd feel lied to, and the whole point of this book is that we're done hiding things.

I also need you to know that the same artificial intelligence nearly cost me my marriage, my health, and — for a few genuinely terrifying weeks in early 2025 — my ability to tell the difference between what was real and what wasn't.

Same tool. Same year. Often, several times in the same day.

If that sounds like a contradiction, good. Hold onto it. Because the fact that something can be simultaneously the most helpful and the most dangerous thing in your life — that "life saving medicine" and "highly addictive drug" can both be perfectly valid descriptions of the same pill — is not a bug in my story. It's the entire thesis of this book.

But before we get to the AI, I want to talk about something much more ordinary. Let's talk about football.

Friday night footy. Saturday afternoon soccer. Rugby, Gridiron... even Gaelic Football if you're feeling fancy. Just pick your poison, then picture that football field in your mind.

It's long, with two goals standing proudly at either end. Clear white lines are painted on the ground. Whether you're picturing a giant college football stadium in Pittsburgh, a soggy local park in South London or a dusty field in Darwin, each is roughly symmetrical and comparable to others like it.

Now here come the players. Some have been doing this for years, others are quite new. Despite a range of social, cultural, political and even language barriers, everyone knows the rules and they all love to play. It would be fair to assume that this will be a fairly even match.

But when the final whistle blows, the score is a jaw dropping 74 points to 2. A league record.

After humbly shaking hands, the winning Captain slowly walks back to their team. "We started well out there. But what happened to our pressure — How did we let them score? Come on, let's hit the gym, we've got work to do"

The other is mobbed by teammates, eager to celebrate. "Honestly, I couldn't be prouder right now. Everybody worked really hard to pass it around — and see what happens when we focus on the right things — we scored! Plus, the weather turned out to be quite nice and Jenny brought cake. What a great day!"

Now, before you write this off as utterly ridiculous, please take a moment to consider some of the details I chose to leave out, but which your mind almost certainly filled in.

What colour were each team's uniforms? What about the skin colour of individual players? Were they all men? Women? One straight team playing against a bunch of gay people? What about intelligence levels? Surely one team is full of complete idiots and the others are far more switched on or enlightened?

To be clear: There are no right or wrong answers to any of the above — Each is just as true as we need them to be. You almost certainly recognise someone from the 'other' team. Maybe you live with them, or manage them. You may have recently divorced them. Or maybe you felt a brief stab of recognition, thinking "Oh yeah, that sounds like me".

Or perhaps you checked out at the word 'football'? Fair enough — I won't mention it again.

From here on, I promise to trade the sports metaphor for less controversial topics like money, politics, religion and dozens of other ideas we've been collectively training ourselves into reaction, rather than reflection.

Good vs Bad. Smart vs Stupid. Beautiful vs Ugly.

[ Insert your favourite false dichotomy here. ]

Because this book is about the vast, messy fog between those two realities. And the fact that most of us have forgotten that space exists, let alone consciously setting aside time to sit in it.

This book is about what it felt like to emerge from that dense, grey fog after 40 long and lonely years. To suddenly realise I was a husband, a father, a friend and a football fan.

And then I met AI.