Satya Nadella (CEO Microsoft) shared an interesting idea this week about AI and what he calls the “Reverse Information Paradox.”
The short version is that every time we use AI, we’re teaching it. Through our prompts, corrections, workflows, and feedback, we’re creating valuable knowledge.
Reading it made me think about WordPress.
For years, we’ve thought about data as the asset. Sites. Posts. Pages. Plugins. Themes.
But maybe the more interesting asset is learning.
Every day, millions of people try to build websites with WordPress. They click buttons. They abandon onboarding flows. They search support docs. They ask questions. They get stuck. They succeed.
Hidden inside all of that is an extraordinary amount of knowledge.
Where do people struggle when creating a site?
What is the first thing they try to do after signing up?
Which explanations work?
Which workflows confuse people?
What separates someone who launches a website from someone who gives up after twenty minutes?
Those questions might be more valuable than any individual piece of content on the platform.
The challenge is that most companies collect data. Fewer collect learning.
Data tells you what happened.
Learning tells you why.
As AI becomes better at spotting patterns, surfacing friction, and identifying successful behaviours, I suspect the companies that win won’t necessarily be the ones with the most users.
They’ll be the ones that turn user behaviour into organisational learning the fastest.
WordPress has spent twenty years helping people publish on the web.
I can’t help wondering how much wisdom about building websites is already sitting there, hidden in plain sight, waiting to be discovered.
Leave a Reply