Something unexpected is happening as our worlds rapidly reshape around AI. At the beginning, I was super excited. I get to “do more in less time”. Today, however, AI is driving me in the opposite direction.
The more automated, polished and artificially “intelligent” our world becomes, the more intensely I find myself craving things that are raw and human, such as art where you can see the fingerprints of the person who made it, or poetry that moves me to the depth of my being. *I recently read a poem by Justin Reilly that did exactly that.
I’ve started craving more live music. I want to sit in the emotion of the lyrics and feel what they felt when writing them. I want to watch films with my children and talk afterwards about the characters and their flaws and desires and heartbreaks. I want conversations that go beyond efficiency and performance, and into what people are experiencing beneath the surface of their perfect lives.
We are living in a world that has taken the training wheels off almost everything. We no longer have to sit with ideas long enough to wrestle with them, learn slowly, retain information or arrive at our own conclusions. We can become “experts” on almost any topic within seconds, and while that should feel like a superpower, it’s making us less thoughtful, less curious and, in many ways, less intelligent.
Our culture rewards speed, scale and polish above almost everything else. Social media accelerated it, corporate culture rewarded it, and now AI is industrialising it with articles, strategies, speeches and personal brands that can be generated in seconds. Content has become infinite and increasingly indistinguishable.
The emotional response from many people (myself included) is exhaustion, it’s not excitement like it once was. So much of what we consume now feels lifeless. The rough edges are gone because the human being behind the words is gone.
I think many of us are beginning to realise that what we truly value was never actually perfection but it was resonance.
The pieces of writing we return to are the ones that tell the truth about being alive, not the most polished. The leaders we remember are the ones who speak honestly and allow themselves to be vulnerable and their emotions exposed. The relationships we value are built from being open and real with each other.
In my day job, I have the privilege of speaking with wonderful executives and a few have said to me recently, “Kate, I think I’ve got one last big run in me and I want it to count, personally.” They want to build something meaningful and they want to contribute and create a legacy that shows who they are and the lessons they’ve learned and how it’s shaped them into the leader they are today. After decades spent climbing, many are questioning whether the endless pursuit of status and scale was ever the point at all.
I understand the feeling completely. The race upward can become depersonalising and somewhere along the way people stop asking themselves what kind of life they want to live and instead focus entirely on performance metrics handed to them by a company with a board to report to and quarterly targets to hit.
Optimization is not the same thing as fulfilment and AI is exposing this distinction very quickly.
The qualities becoming more valuable in an AI-saturated world are human ones. Judgment, taste, emotional intelligence, storytelling, moral courage, creativity, presence. The ability to connect disparate ideas and sit with ambiguity. The presence and care to make another person feel seen, heard and valued.
The future will not belong exclusively to the people who can use AI best. I believe it will belong to the people who remain most human while using it.
I think this is also why so many people are feeling drawn back toward simpler things. I find myself wanting to spend less time online and more time outside. I want mornings without my phone, to sip my coffee while listening to birds, and read poetry that is filled with raw truths.
Even my perspective on success and parenting has changed. I care less and less about their grades and more about them being a good person and all-rounded human. I want them to feel grounded in themselves and to build lives that are meaningful, connected and emotionally rich, because the world they are growing into will reward adaptability and humanity more than obedience and perfection.
The irony in all of this is almost beautiful when you think about it. The faster the world moves toward automation, optimization and artificial intelligence, the more many of us seem to be craving the opposite.
Perhaps this is the unexpected gift in all of it. AI is forcing us to get clear on what is uniquely human and therefore irreplaceable. The speed, the noise, the endless stream of perfectly polished content is making many of us realise how deeply we value things that are imperfect, emotional, slow and real.
I see it in the leaders I speak with every day. I see it in the way people are reassessing success, legacy, relationships and meaning. I see it in my own desire to put my phone down, reconnect with people I love and create work that feels alive.
Let me know if you’re feeling this too, or if you’re noticing other signs that people are starting to reject the old “always on, always optimizing” way of living and working.
I have a feeling we’re only at the beginning of this shift.
Kate
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