Thigmotropic AI and the Strangler Test: Four Questions Before You Automate
Vines don't have eyes. They find a tree by touch.
When a tendril brushes a trunk, it registers the contact and starts to wrap. Come back two days later, and it's halfway around. Botanists call this thigmotropism: growth that follows touch.
AI is thigmotropic.
It doesn't grow toward truth or toward good intentions. It grows around whatever it touches. It found every book, every repo, and every forum thread we'd already written, and it wrapped itself around all of it. Inside a company, it does the same thing at a smaller scale: hand it your documents, and it grows around your documents, faithfully, quickly, and confidently.
The vine has no opinion about what it's holding. That part is on us. There are two ways this goes, and by the end you'll have a four-question test to tell which one you're planting.
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