How to deal with the existential crisis presented by AI

The other day a friend told me how she was planning to fight the encroachment of artificial intelligence tools replacing writing, graphic design, and other human creator skills. “It’s taking the heart and soul out of our work,” she proclaimed. “This is nothing less than an existential crisis presented by AI.”

It took me an hour to talk her off her cliff.

But perhaps you’re feeling some of this anxiety and sadness, too. I’ve thought about this a lot. HUMAN skills are being effortlessly replaced by AI. If you’re a creator, you’d have to be a sponge-like creature at the bottom of the Mariana Trench NOT to have an emotional reaction to what’s going in.

So let me share some calming thoughts with you today. Yes, there is an existential crisis presented by AI. Let’s deal with it in a rational and productive way and come out stronger on the other side. Today I will put our challenge in the context of three lessons … and provide a solution at the end.

Lesson one: The story of the calculator.

I’m old enough to remember the profound controversy that erupted when low-cost personal calculators became adopted in the 1980s. Suddenly, any person could solve complex math problems, even if they were terrible at math.