Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) Kill Serendipity?
AI gives answers faster than ever. But what happens to discovery when there’s nothing left to click? The answer may be more human, and more hopeful, than you think.
Holly Springs, NC, Feb. 6, 2026
At first glance, it feels like the answer should be yes.
Artificial intelligence is astonishingly efficient. Ask a question, and instead of ten blue links, endless scrolling, and side trips down the internet rabbit hole, you get a clean, confident response. One answer. One narrative. One apparent truth.
If serendipity is about stumbling onto the unexpected, it’s reasonable to wonder whether AI leaves any room for it at all.
But that fear, while understandable, misses something important.
AI does not kill serendipity. It changes where serendipity lives.
Traditional search engines were messy by design. You searched, skimmed, clicked, and compared. Along the way, you might notice a headline you weren’t looking for, click something out of curiosity, or encounter a perspective you didn’t expect. That friction created discovery, even if it also created clutter and wasted time.
AI removes much of that friction. It compresses exploration into resolution. You get oriented quickly and move on. As a result, passive discovery declines. You are less likely to stumble into something by accident.
But curiosity does not disappear.
What changes in an AI-driven world is not curiosity itself, but how it shows up. When people realize that AI responses are summaries rather than final truths, that confident answers can still leave things out, and that one response rarely captures every reasonable way to think about an issue, they do something very human. They ask again.
“Are you sure?”
“Is there another way to look at this?”
“What am I missing?”
Those follow-up questions are not mistakes. They are engagement.
In the search era, discovery happened through clicks. In the AI era, discovery increasingly happens through challenges. Each follow-up reopens the conversation, surfaces assumptions, introduces different viewpoints, and adds nuance. Instead of saying, “I didn’t mean to click that,” people are more likely to say, “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
Efficiency is not the enemy here. The real risk is treating the first answer as the final one. But that is not how people behave when something matters. Most of us do not interrogate trivia or second-guess simple tasks. When the topic affects our health, finances, community, or values, we slow down and ask more questions. Curiosity turns on when the stakes go up.
AI does not shut off that instinct. If anything, clear first answers can make it easier to see what still does not sit right.
Serendipity used to come from wandering. Now it comes from probing. AI handles the obvious quickly, which leaves more room for people to focus on why something matters, who benefits and who does not, what changes if assumptions shift, and how an issue plays out locally rather than in theory.
Discovery does not vanish. It becomes more intentional.
So, will AI kill serendipity?
No.
AI may reduce accidental discovery, but it does not reduce the human instinct to question answers that feel incomplete, consequential, or misaligned with lived experience. AI may give faster answers, but it does not replace our instinct to question what matters to us. And that instinct is where discovery has always lived.
About the Author
Christian A. Hendricks is the publisher and founder of Holly Springs Update, a local news publication covering Holly Springs, NC, and its surrounding area. From time to time, he shares his views on national, regional, and state issues. He can be reached via email at christian.hendricks@hollyspringsupdate.com.
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A full list of writings can be found here (click)