The one thing AI can’t do

I was feeling bummed after learning that some publications were letting go of their writers and replacing them with AI. A couple days later, pop icon and superstar, Harry Styles, dropped a music video for his song Satellite. 

The video centres around a mini vacuum robot who went on an exploration of its little corner of the world after seeing NASA’s Curiosity, the rover designed to explore Mars, on tv. That little robot reminded me of something not even AI could do: to be curious and fascinated. 

Sure, it can create award winning photographs, write essays, and make Kanye covers of Taylor Swift songs but it could never emulate what it is to feel something, to experience something. Those complex sets of data and binaries are no match for human emotion and that is what will forever separate us from AI. 

As humans, we have a thirst for wander. We’re always discovering new things and places. We’re in awe of different cultures and fascinated by old architectures. We like to sample new cuisines and we tell our friends about them. AI can’t do that.

It will never know what it feels like to hop on a plane one evening and change the trajectory of your life forever. It will never know what it feels like to walk along a new neighbourhood on an autumn morning, the pavement still wet with rain from the night before. It will never know what it feels like to meet someone and instantly feel at home. 

Because of that, it will never truly know how to tell stories that speak to our emotions, that makes us feel. Humans are great storytellers and we have been for centuries. The stories we tell connects people and transcends generations because it’s personal and unique. Not one story will truly be the same as the next. So why are we letting some new technology tell us we're no good at what we’ve been doing since our inception?