As the smoke has settled on the 4th of July to become a film of ash on the roads and rocks, and we see June and another NYTECHWEEK fade far into the distance, one constant is dangling in front of us like a glistening chef knife, AI.

AI lies as a tool on humanity's worktop, ready to find a way to right our environmental and societal wrongs, accelerate creativity, or, by some, poised to inflict the fatal blow that will cause our species' downfall (hopefully, decades away, if at all).

Over the past twelve months, we have straddled the divide between tech and art, listening to and observing the stories and opinions of thought leaders, business owners, artists, workers, and the generally overwhelmed public.

In that time, we've seen a constant shift between incredible hope and aimless despair as we've heard diverse perspectives on AI. Some see it as a beneficial tool they use daily, while others fear it like a scene from The Terminator, predicting it as the harbinger of our demise.

We have experienced industry leaders' overwhelming confidence in their ability to predict the future when their only certainty is an internally written 90-day roadmap that could change based on a for-profit status.

For generally the better, AI has been with us for decades as a silent partner in our hands, cars, and lives, going unnoticed. Only recently, it came out of the shadows to show off its glistening scales at the behest of its champions and warriors.

But what does all of this pomp and circumstance mean for AI and, more importantly, us?

The Real Dragon

In 2019, I had the honor of leading one of the most prestigious brands in the US, one touched by Paul Revere, Presidents, Royalty, Poets, and history itself. While wrestling with 200 years of change, the enigmatic Brian Collins reintroduced me to the tale of Beowulf and all its hidden lessons, which apply appropriately today, yesterday, and in every industry that has gone before.

The dragons we face today are not the ones we face tomorrow and almost certainly not the ones we should be most worried about.

Meandering back through time, we can now see how “A Place for Friends” led to social platforms becoming one of today’s top causes of mental health issues, that plastic, “The Wonder Material of Tomorrow,” is now so burdensome on our planet that it can be found at microscopic levels in plants and cells.

We can rewind as far back as the invention of the printing press. We can draw similar lines between today's and the Church’s concern with reform because of access to information, and society is worried about information overload. But also the misinformation it delivered.

The real problems often lie in what we don’t see while marveling at the spectacular. 

And that problem is rarely technology but people and the infatuation of new shiny. We follow enigmatic storytellers and non-seated politicians as they tell us this is the only new way.

Tools not culture

Technology is now infused into our lives and part of the everyday zeitgeist. With exceptional marketing and wordsmithing, innovators can create fads and trends, generating hype, FOMO, and showers of cash from deep pockets that seeped through the cracks into nowhere.

Whether you love Monkeys or Monet, replacing the letters A-R-T with N-F-T created a feverish explosion of hype and momentum. Early adopters clamored for anything with those three letters, in the belief that they all would be an investment in the future, spitting out way more losers than winners.

Now, the power of the infrastructure of an NFT is impressive. It’s a tool that opens the art/creative world to many more artists, whether you are manipulating pixels or oil paints. It creates ownership and accountability, but what it doesn’t do is outline value. More to the point, it is cultural value and relevance that essentially drives monetary value.

What controls this is humanity, culture, and time. Nothing more.

You can have it in any color you want

Recounting a sales meeting in 1909 in his 1922 co-written autobiography “My Life And Work,” Henry Ford immortalized the sentence, “‘Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black” as Ford rolled out the moving assembly line. 

At the time, it was a step back in terms of options, but in terms of technology and production, it was a leap forward. Previously, Ford offered cars in red and many other darker, richer colors.

But this didn’t stop the vast rainbow of colors we have today. What we have today is due to humans' creativity and individuality. There is hot rodding, rat rodding, drag racing, and more.

Jump forward to June 2024 and an interview with Mira Murati. This charismatic powerhouse within tech rattled the creative community with vague statements about jobs not being needed and some should have never been around, as well as dreams of an AI creative future.

Does this become a moment where you can do anything you want as long as it is AI, with future OpenAI robots training to be sculptors, artists, and designers? What gives human meaning to stone and pigment?

Yes, AI is here to stay, but what gets breezed past is what got us here and what needs to support its future. Power. Brain power. Creative Power.

Currently, most models draw from everything we give them in an open-source world. But like a bucket beside a well, it needs someone to fill it up with the deep, rich knowledge of the unknown and what makes humans perfect—imperfection.

Human creativity and experiences aren’t linear. They are a random thought on a rainy day, wondering if you should go to Huddersfield. It’s Falling down a step of a bodega into the arms of your future partner and instantly knowing it. It’s purposely leaving a reversed guitar bass solo in a final cut of a disco track to get a number-one hit.

All tech must be humane

Sitting on a park bench with a friend just outside New York in the winter of 2022, as the hype of ChatGPT began to burn like an insane forest fire, we discussed the usage of AI. Their excitement crackled and popped like a fresh log on that fire.

I watched their pupils dilate. Their breath deepened as they unleashed with excitement their story of how much the writing for their brand had improved since the adoption of ChatGpt, how they were in the throws of a re-org, the reduction of their team, and even the possibility of removal altogether.

At that moment, I had three simple questions. 

Who approves the concept direction?
Who reviews the initial drafts and gives feedback?
Who signs off on the final?

With a swift, confident retort, the answer, like a winning line in tic tac toe (naughts and crosses to us Brits), was me, me, and ME!

This set up my final painful question. Who’s replacing you?

As we grapple with these questions globally, on every single part of the professional and personal scale, we can see that humans can make it both a wondrous future or a possible scary story read by the generations after us.

No matter the technology.

The critical goal is not to fear AI but to challenge it. We must not make AI human but humane and not accept it as inevitable because if the lights go out, the pen becomes mightier than the processor.

To truly understand the future. It hasn’t been written, and the things we see and hear right now are just the imaginations of storytellers. Some things will be true, and others will take longer to come to life than flying cars from the Jetsons.