The AI Bodysnatcher

I work in ideas, and I take responsibility for where they lead.

I’ve been writing, publishing, and developing ideas long before AI existed. Since I was seven, really. I’m grateful that proof of my thinking and self-concept exists in the world from before this moment, because it reminds me that a human point of view earned over time cannot be faked.

It’s not that tools are unimportant. I was here when we moved from typewriters, to word processors, to computers. And thankfully, I lived much of my life without cell phones. Oh, the freedom we had. Best time ever. Secrets untold. But I digress.

What has always mattered to me is thinking, experience, evaluation, and the pursuit of real solutions. I’ve long believed we can change the world for the better, and I believe that even more strongly now.

AI matters. It will help us progress.

It can expand what’s possible and support the speed at which beautiful, helpful ideas develop and move through the world.

But it cannot replace the human elements that give ideas meaning.

Compassion.

Intent.

The lived experience that shapes why something is said or believed, and how it is carried forward.

Tools can assist expression, but they cannot stand in for it.

They don’t carry sensory-based memory.

They don’t feel consequence.

They don’t decide what matters.

Those choices are still ours.

And even as systems approach general intelligence, the responsibility for what gets built, amplified, and rewarded remains human.

My hope is that as these tools become more powerful, we remain committed to our own humanity. To thinking, feeling, questioning, and creating for ourselves. Not outsourcing our voice, or our needs, or our desires, but strengthening them.

Because the future won’t be shaped by what machines can generate.

It will be shaped by what humans choose to create, and why.

And if you ever see me use the word intersection when I’m not writing about these streets, or see me using dashes instead of commas, you’ll know I’ve been taken over by the body snatcher known as AI, because that is mos def not me.