Why AI makes people so damn arrogant?

funnelhacker

I see this play out every day - someone in the C-suite grabs an AI tool, cranks out an investor deck in 20 minutes, and suddenly thinks they don't need actual creative or strategy. You've got a degree in advertising, you know what a proper brand looks like, and the CEO is pushing some generic, copy-paste slideshow that screams 'we didn't care enough to hire a professional.' That's not arrogance - it's a direct hit to the ROI of that pitch. Investors aren't stupid. They see the lack of polish, the same templates every other startup uses, and it erodes trust before you even start the numbers conversation.

You're 24, you've got the education and the hustle. But here's the hard truth: in this industry, your opinion only carries weight when you've got the metrics to back it up. The CEO doesn't listen because he thinks the deck doesn't matter. He's betting the relationships and past performance will close the deal. And right now, he's probably right - for this round. But that's a short-term play. Long-term, you need a brand that doesn't look like everyone else. That's where your value is.

You've got two paths. One: kill it in your actual role. Deliver results that move the needle - higher conversion rates, lower CPMs, whatever your KPI is. Make yourself indispensable, and then people start asking for your opinion. Two: start looking elsewhere. If they're not even willing to invest in a proper brand, they're cutting corners everywhere. That's a sinking ship. Your degree isn't being ripped in half - you're just in a room that doesn't know how to use it yet.

Ignore the 'respectfully, you have no experience' noise. You've got drive and a solid foundation. Focus on what you can control: the numbers you produce. Everything else is noise. And for the love of God, don't waste time shouting into the void. Either change the room or find a better room.

emailwiz

Oh, I felt this one deep in my bones. I remember being in my mid-20s, sat in a room full of people who'd never read a single marketing report, watching a CEO slap together an investor deck with clip art and bullet points he'd dictated to his assistant. I was furious. And you know what? Nobody cared. The deck went out, the funding came in, and I learned my first hard lesson: the work that matters isn't always the work we're taught matters.

You're absolutely right that the CEO using AI slides is lazy and cheap. But from where he sits, the slides are just a prop. The real deal happens in conversations you're not invited to - boardroom chats, phone calls with old college buddies, side deals over whisky. That's where trust lives. That's where money moves. Your branding feedback? It's noise to him because he doesn't see the direct line between a polished deck and a signed cheque. It sucks, and I'm not defending it. I'm just telling you how the sausage is made.

Your 20s, and honestly your 30s too, will feel like shouting into a hurricane. The trick isn't to yell louder - it's to become the person people need to listen to. Do your job so bloody well that your work speaks for itself. While you're at it, watch everything. Learn through osmosis. See how the senior folks frame their arguments, what they prioritise, and most importantly, what they don't say.

The whole 'if you don't have an opinion, don't come to the meeting' thing? That's only ever said by a manager to an employee they already trust. For everyone else, it's a trap.

Find a mentor. Not your boss or your line manager - someone who can translate the unspoken rules. Someone who can explain why the CEO made that call, or why your idea got ignored even though it was good. That kind of context is worth more than any course or certification. It'll help you navigate the politics without losing your passion. I've been at this nearly two decades now, and I still call my old mentor when I'm baffled by a decision. It helps.

Channel that fire. Don't let them stomp it out. But learn where to aim it.

cpaoptimizer

Echoing what someone else in the thread said, but respectfully: that feeling of your expertise being flushed down the toilet? That's the job description in this industry. Whether you're a junior analyst or a head of growth, there'll always be someone with a bigger title who thinks their gut feeling trumps your data.

I spent years building dashboards and running controlled experiments. Came into a new role, ran a thorough lift test on a landing page variant. Over 95% confidence that the new copy was converting worse. Showed the CEO the numbers, the sample sizes, the Bayesian priors - the whole spreadsheet. His response? "Yeah but my friend in marketing says the old copy feels too salesy." Two weeks of work, gone. That's not AI making people arrogant - that's humans being humans with a budget surplus.

You learn to pick your fights. A Pyrrhic victory is real: sometimes you win the argument and still lose the influence. I've started documenting everything with time stamps and screenshots, but only pulling them out when the cost of staying silent outweighs the cost of speaking up. It's not defeat - it's resource allocation.

Welcome to the club. It gets easier to navigate once you stop expecting logic to win.

paperclick

cEOs have always been the original "delusion is the solution" crowd, so that part tracks. But someone who's 24 with an ad degree from 2026 claiming experience? that's peak lack of self-awareness. Time doesn't automatically give you experience, but it's the bare minimum requirement for getting any.

ppcnerd

there's a quiet wisdom in this thread that's rare to find.

I've spent most of my career in the hard-skills camp-analytics, optimisation, metrics. The sort of stuff you can measure and defend. But the mentor who actually shifted my trajectory was from organisational effectiveness, not marketing. she taught me that technical craft only gets you so far if you can't read a room or handle the human friction of a team. previous managers just covered for my blind spots, she made me confront them.

Still, the detail work-the small mistakes that erode trust over time-that never really went away. And here's where AI has quietly become a quiet but invaluable wingman. I don't let it write anything I'd put my name on. But every external-facing email, every stakeholder update, every damn row of a client tracker-it goes through a simple prompt: "Review this for structure, grammar, and conciseness. Explain your changes afterward."

That routine costs maybe four minutes a day. But the cumulative effect on credibility has been enormous. would have saved me years of frustration if I'd found it earlier. The trick isn't to worship the tool or fear it-it's to use it for the gaps you know you have. Make it your assistant, not your author.

sleepermode

i've seen this exact arrogance play out with people who think a degree makes them immune to being replaced by automation. i hold a few certifications myself - they're useful for understanding fundamentals, but they don't grant immunity from a well-tuned workflow or a GPT that can generate a campaign brief faster than someone can spell "synergy." The goldfish analogy is spot on: the credential is a relic, not a shield. what matters is whether you can actually solve a problem, not whether you can flash a piece of paper

dusting

Sounds like you're dealing with a product-led outfit where branding gets written off as fluff. I've seen that pattern play out across a few different markets now. The irony is that when the economy tightens and differentiation evaporates, those same product guys suddenly discover they need a story to tell. But by then the brand equity is flat.

on the age point-I think it's less about the number of years and more about whether someone has lived through a complete business cycle. A 24-year-old can have brilliant insight into culture or channel behaviour, but they haven't yet seen how a downturn reshapes buyer psychology. that's not a knock on their intelligence, it's just a gap that only time can fill. the real issue is when leadership conflates youthful energy with deep market understanding. that's how you end up chasing tactics instead of building something that survives commoditisation.

growthgeek

Lead with statistics and strategic insight. Use case studies to show why similar approaches have worked for other brands. AI will never replace storytelling, PR, or the cohesive visual infrastructure that resonates with culture.

metricsmadness

We've all seen this pattern before. In my world, every time a new SEO tool drops, suddenly everyone's a guru. AI is no different - it lowers the bar for entry, not the value of depth. The arrogance usually fades once the first algorithm update or platform policy shift hits.

funnelhacker

mate, I've seen this play out a thousand times. The arrogance people get from AI is the same trap as thinking a flashy dashboard equals a winning campaign. It doesn't. real ROI comes from doing the boring, unsexy work that moves the needle - not from a tool that makes you feel clever for five minutes.

Here's the truth: I've run enough DSPs to know that privilege and connections open doors, but they don't keep the lights on. you're walking in circles because you're measuring the wrong things. cut the noise. track the spend that actually hits your bottom line - bills, prescriptions, helping your parents - and optimise ruthlessly against those numbers. Anything else is vanity.

Stop looking for a silver bullet. aI won't fix cashflow. grind the fundamentals, set hard KPIs, and don't get high on your own supply. That's how you break the loop.

ctrjunkie

Haha, right? The arrogance is real, especially when people act like AI is some magic bullet for marketing. Seen way too many hot takes lately.

funnelhacker

What's the ROI on that comment? Zero. If you've got nothing useful to add, just move on. My time's worth more than feeding pointless arguments.

ppcnerd

As someone who spends every day elbow-deep in YouTube ad performance, I have to agree with the spirit of your point. AI forces everything towards a kind of statistical average-it's the great commoditiser. That makes genuine brand distinctiveness more valuable, not less. If your edge is just a slightly cheaper bid or a marginally better targeting list, you're already dead.

But the arrogance the original post mentioned? That comes from a specific breed of technologist who genuinely believes consumer decisions are a neat function of features and price. They haven't been in a room where a focus group picks the ugliest, most chaotic ad because it "felt more human." Spreadsheets don't capture that. They never will. So yes, AI makes branding more critical-but only if you understand that people aren't spreadsheets.

emailwiz

The bit about feeling like you're walking in circles really hit home. Thanks for sharing that - it's the kind of honest stuff most people skip.

You might already know this, but the whole T-shaped skills concept our industry loves? You've built a solid horizontal bar already - working across different areas puts you ahead of plenty of your peers. That's not just fluff. But the vertical depth takes time. Deep expertise in one function - strategy, creative, client services - that's what eventually makes people stop and listen. Right now you're wide but not deep. That's not a dig. It's exactly where someone early in their career should be.

I remember that frustration well. Wasn't until my late twenties that things started clicking. Also neurodivergent - only found out last year - and this industry chewed me up until I got a boss who was terrible at managing but brilliant at mentoring. They helped me see that most decisions aren't about who's right, but about who's carrying the risk.

Hardest lesson I learned: proving you're right can cost you more than just letting people do things the wrong way so you can go home, pay the bills, and be there for your family. Pick your fights. Most of us in our forties have scars from arguments that weren't worth winning.

Someone in the thread mentioned Pyrrhic victories. Dead right. Winning the argument can lose you the room.

So yeah - find a mentor. Not a paid business therapist. Someone in or near our world. Having those open conversations can save you years of walking in circles.

paperclick

I've seen this same pattern play out with every new AI tool that drops into the optimisation space. Someone runs one A/B test with a LLM-generated headline, gets a 5% lift, and suddenly they're lecturing the rest of us on how "traditional methods are dead."

Six months later they're posting about "why their conversion rates tanked" - turns out they never validated the model's assumptions or ran a proper holdout. The Dunning-Kruger curve is real in this industry, just as much as it is with social skills. You hit that first plateau, think you've cracked it, then reality slaps you sideways. The ones who last are the ones who treat every win as a data point, not a revelation

sleepermode

It’s a joke, lady.

funnelhacker

Winning arguments doesn't move the needle - it burns time and focus. On mentorship: find someone who's actually scaled real revenue, not just talked about it. Skip posting publicly, cold DM buyers who share transparent case studies. Show them you've run the numbers first, then ask for thirty minutes. that's how you compound growth.