Should We Be Worried About AI?

One afternoon last year, I settled down to my laptop, coffee at hand, looking at text I hadn't written. More precisely, it was a script generated by AI. The thing was structurally sound – it had a few good jokes, and the pacing worked. I had asked it to write a short film about friendship and grief, themes I consider somehow at the core of humanity. And here it was: an algorithm, making a story out of digital scraps, which could possess at least a shell of my idea.

?AI – there was no real way it could replace my human words. It seemed like cheating, like sneaking a peek beneath a magician's top hat. But the more I read it, the more anxious I became. It wasn't fantastic – but it wasn't awful either. And that was bad news enough for me.

?In my career as a writer and editor, which spans over a quarter of a century now – shaping stories, PR and fundraising campaigns, and ideas – it's natural to want to look back and take stock. Typewriters gave way to Macs and Alphalinks, then Google Docs; nothing felt like an existential threat, merely new communication methods. But AI is different. It's not just a new medium. It's intruding into the creative process itself.

A graphic designer pal of mine phoned me a few months ago in a flap. She'd lost a contract from a long-term client, who'd decided that there was a faster and cheaper way to get logos and graphics – a new AI platform could spit them out for peanuts. "It's devastating," she told me. She'd worked with them for years. She knew their brand 'inside out'. She had been replaced, in effect, by a machine.

?I had nothing reassuring to tell her because she knew – and we all knew – that it was the truth. In some industries, AI is already plan A, not plan B.

That conversation brought me back to the script I had before me. What about young creatives—just-graduated dreamers racing into the industry? How would they compete with the world on a level playing field? Long gone are the days when creativity was deemed necessary. Where would their passion have its place?

Later, I interviewed a filmmaker who had just completed a short movie, half of which was created with AI tools. "How was that?' I asked him. "It was quicker, cheaper," he replied. Then he amended himself: "It's not right. The things I made with AI — they were dead." You can have the mechanism to create, but you can't have the spirit.

And that's when I thought: the soul. That's what we bring to creative, person-to-person work — that no machine could ever copy, no matter how robotically advanced.

I thought of the long nights attempting sentences that weren't true. The joy of finding the precise words to say what I wanted to say – about something I felt deeply – for the first time. Then of exposing myself to judgment. That feeling of having put something of me into the world. No AI will ever feel joy, risk, and grief.

A few weeks later, I met this vibrant young writer at a workshop, where she presented and told some of her stories. She brimmed with energy yet was scared. 'Will there still be room for people like me to stand up and say: I want to write without using AI?' I didn't have a simple answer, so I said: "Technology always changes how we work, and so many things could change. However, Technology can never change why we create. The stories stem from who we are, and the emotions we express stem from who we are, what we've experienced, and our genetics. AI is amazing and can help A LOT, but AI cannot feel it. We do not know what drives us. And that will always be your superpower, your gift. Don't ever forget that."

AI challenges us but also reminds us of what's irreplaceable. Our imperfections, the human soul, make our creativity so unique. In some sense, AI can create art. But it can't feel the way we do — using it can't recreate the artsy mess that is being human.

?So, am I worried about the rise of AI? Sure. Five or ten years from now, what would an AI-induced society look like? I am still determining what our creative landscape will look like. Certain jobs will vanish. We will write with AI in ways we can't yet begin to conceive. Some myth-manipulation-based heist movies will be written by AI shortly, and they are far better than anything I could write. But as long as we write and create from a place of truth, from a place we can access, there will be room for human creativity.

Yes, I worry, but I'm not a defeatist. Like other challenges, we can work with the AI genie—not against it. Let's do this.