Human beings have always tended to describe the human mind in terms of the technology of the day. For Plato, memory was impressions pressed into wax in the 4th century BCE. Descartes saw the body and mind as a clock in the 17th/18th century. Today though, we anthropomorphise AI as thinking, feeling and creating.

Story: the connective tissue of being human

Story is fundamental to humans. We have been using narrative to make sense of the world around us ever since we had the cognitive ability to create it. Stories are communal, they are connective. They are our means of sharing information, understanding and emotion. To tell stories is to be human alone.

The new storyteller on the block

At least it was. We now have machines which can spin a yarn. ChatGPT drafts eulogies, Gemini writes to sports heroes, DALL-E wins painting prizes. Whether or not you believe that what AI is doing is actual ‘creativity’, it can undeniably generate story-shaped data.

It can respond to messages on social media, write resumes and spec video projects. As technology has advanced, it has encroached further and further on the core essence of what it is to be a human.

Why the metaphor turns on us

No one in ancient Greece felt any less human because their brain was compared to a complex wax tablet. But when we make these comparisons, when we judge humans by simple inputs and outputs – as we often do in the workplace (response times, clicks, cost per interaction) – we reduce ourselves.

Humans are so much messier and richer than any tool or digital ‘agent’ could ever be. We look at the ever-increasing capabilities of our technologies and we fear our usurpation, yet an AI will never look into the eyes of a loved one, feel the early evening breeze on its face, or the fleeting disappointment of missing out on the last cookie at coffee time.

A great writer may have read widely, but greatness finally rests on having lived widely. AI has ‘read’ every book, processed a trillion holiday photos and catalogued a billion years of movies; it hasn’t lived for a single second.

We must hold the line on what makes us human

Maybe it doesn’t need to to become everything the boosters say it will become. Frankly, freeze development right now, it would already change our lives profoundly. But we should have faith in our abilities as humans into the future. The only way to do this though, is to safeguard the things that are make us human – emotion, creativity, connection.

AI is incredible. For process optimization, drug design, as an assistant and a million other uses. But we surrender our competencies at our peril. Offload feeling, inventiveness and relationship building, and we deserve to be little more than unemployed meat puppets with low-grade robot brains.