AI versus What Ought to Be
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The question: Lindsay, what's the difference between the work you do and the work AI can create?
The question is legitimate. If you can be efficient, save money, and get a good-enough product out of AI, why pay someone to mine a message for you?
Smarter people than I have written about this (and keep writing about it). If you have the time, this argument is worth the read (along with his footnotes that provide even more great reads).
If I had to sum up all their thoughts and ideas into one very oversimplified answer, it would be this:
?I'm not here to keep us efficient. I'm here to keep us human.
The power of the written word, whether you call it story or language or narrative, is that it forces us to slow down and see what's real versus what's manufactured – out of our own bias, our own hopes and dreams, our own flawed data.
AI is about input/output. Story is about discovery/change.
And when you willingly trade the power of that discovery/change for efficiency, it always comes with a cost.
In his 2008 article, Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr emerged as a prophet for our time, pointing out how something even as small as the invention of a clock changed everything about our human?nature.
The clock's methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum? observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.
The work I do isn't just about the science of measurable outcomes. And I know in the world of business, that's a near maniacal thing to say out loud.
But story recognizes that the ticking of a clock is no substitute for the beating of a heart. It's here to give your soul salience and keep you connected to the people you created your business for in the first place.
You can choose AI to speed up your processes. You should use AI to speed up your processes.
But you should never confuse the work of AI with the work of story.
To quote Robert McKee, famed author and story consultant, unlike AI, “Story doesn't tell us what we should do.” Instead, “Great stories make what IS clear. . . stories are equipment for living.”
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?Ask AI how to build your business or how to write your website or how to create a winning proposal, and it will shoot out example after example in time-warping speed. Scouring the galaxial library of world knowledge, it hijacks the output of others in order to input those same ideas and strategies into your heart and mind.
?It tells you WHAT to do, rather than subjecting itself to the hard work of a storyteller who walks beyond the promise of efficiency to suit up, put on her oxygen tank, and dive into the deep, uncertain caverns of real life to help you understand WHAT IS.
And if like AI, you wonder if WHAT IS holds any relevance in today's techno-ruled world, then my answer is this: When you're drowning in the waters of what to do, breathing in the air of WHAT IS is the only way to give life to WHAT OUGHT TO BE.
?More on this next time. . .
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Find out more at storyhousefifteen.com.?
I help high-impact leaders uncover what's holding them back so they can become better leaders--for themselves, their families, and their businesses.
1 个月Such wisdom, Lindsay. You never cease to amaze me. This article is so on point to where we are today. I love AI, but, I also know the power of the process of writing. As we work to discover what is real and true for us, we emerge a deeper, more authentic, human being. Rather than use AI to "write" the story, I use it for inspiration and clarity. I find that I can have "intellligent conversations" with this instrument as it now knows my voice and preferences. It clearly does not replace my writing process, but it can analyze thoughts and directions I'm considering, and in doing so, provide me with alternative approaches that I might not have considered. Your article is a caveat to those who have not yet experienced the joy of writing. I say this because I think we both fear a world where people simply repeat what's out there without taking the time to foster their own ideas. Will we eventually lose our collective creative spirit as we come to rely more on AI? I think of my collaboration with AI as being right brain vs. left, with AI sometimes being the left--a tool to help me crystalize thoughts. Less the writer, but more of a brainstorming partner--one that pushes me to note other perspectives that I might not consider otherwise.
? Chief Executive Officer at CLARAfi
1 个月Absolutely love this line: I'm not here to keep us efficient. I'm here to keep us human. Great perspective and reminders from a genuine leader - thanks for sharing Lindsay Hotmire