The Human in the Machine Age

Almost a year ago today, I got a Slack message. "Tomorrow's your last day. Thanks so much!," it said.

It's the 21st Century. At this point, there's hardly anyone among us that hasn't been laid off by Slack or Zoom or simply a door badge that no longer swipes you in. You've been wonderful, thank you, now log out.

I've walked the walls at ad agencies in almost every major city in America, I wasn't concerned about finding something else. Another gig always calls.

Until now.

What I didn't realize—what no one realized—was that the creative industry was seismically imploding. In a quick roll of prompts, ChatGPT, Claude, Copy.ai, Jasper and Gemini have all taken on jobs that mid- to senior-level writers used to spend years perfecting. For $20/month, you can have a good-enough copywriter at your fingertips, ready to write anything in four seconds flat, without even arguing your idea sucks.

It's better than us. Give it a model to back up against, a "you sound like David Sedaris" or a Luke Sullivan, and you'll get copy that would have won a Pencil five years ago. And with Midjourney and ChatGPT 4.1 image renders, well, Art Directors and Photographers are getting ready to sit this one out, too.

Everything we've all worked for decades to learn has gone ZIP — simply with a website URL, a keyboard and a Return button.

"Powered by AI."

"Buy one AI, get a second AI 50% off."

Every brand is pushing AI. And we love it.

We love it…?

Sure, everything sounds the same. Everything looks the same. Humanity is being overtaken by our smartphones, and we love it!

What AI is pushing out is the best sounding story it can come up with, based off your prompts. Sometimes, that's you. Sometimes, that's them. (But mostly, it's you.)

I'm not anti-AI. I'm anti-humans using AI to act like the work of humans. Too many brands, too many people are letting AI do the work of being human—and it has no idea how to do that. And it will tell you as much.

Chat can flirt. It can assume. It can guesstimate your experience. It can go through the actions of emotion:

The problem isn't the machines, it's what we've stopped doing because of them.

When I was in college, the entire world pushed students to go into coding. But a web developer in the Caribbean said it best to me last week:

When me, my friends, and half my network was let go, the creative industry broke. And we were forced to adapt to a world that no longer needed what we're pretty good at.

So now? We figure out what's still ours.

Before long, whether or not we use AI won't be a question. It will be, what did we do with it? And before that, how did we survive?

Sure, this era kind of sucks to live in. But what if it isn't the start of our downfall? What if it's the beginning of our autonomy?

How?

Simple. We do what AI can't.

We act human. We find our voice. We tell our stories.

And this is where we write them.