Christopher Nolan's Odyssey reframes the Trojan Horse as a stroke of genius whose consequences could not be called back. I have not been able to stop seeing the parallel to what we are building with AI and Generative Engine Optimization.

Ask a language model a question it cannot answer, and watch what it does. It answers anyway — fluently, completely, with the grammar of certainty. In Unverified, I let the machine testify about what it's actually doing when it hands you that answer. What it said, I haven't been able to shake.

We now ask AI a question and accept the answer without checking the source. Charles Smitherman on what happens to truth when verification quietly disappears—and his new book, Unverified.