AI Did Not Write This

The world is changing—faster and faster. I am of an age where I remember life without color TV, where long-distance calls were short and you had to shout, and when it made sense to carry a quarter in your pocket in case of emergency.

My father worked for IBM, and when I was little, I remember him telling me about these new wonders called computers. He said one day you would be able to ask a computer any question and it would give you the answer. I was dumbfounded. That was an age when I had a lot of questions, and nobody had answers to most of them.

Now it’s AI that is supposed to have all the answers. I admit, I enjoy ChatGPT, and I ask it all kinds of things. From “Who am I?” to “How can I make more money?” Just now, out of curiosity, I asked the classic children’s question, “Why is the sky blue?” Not surprisingly, it gave me a short lesson on physics (it has something to do with a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering, if you’re interested).

ChatGPT doesn’t seem to understand that when you ask why the sky is blue, you are probably five years old and don’t necessarily want a physics lesson. So I asked it to write a children’s poem about why the sky is blue.

In about one hundredth of a second, it came up with this:

Why the Sky Is Blue

The sun shines bright up in the sky,
With rainbow colors flying by.
They dance and twirl through air so high,
But one gets scattered far and wide.

The tiny blue, so light and quick,
Spins and bounces, does a trick!
It zooms around for all to see,
And paints the sky so brilliantly.

So when you look up way up there,
And see the blue so soft and fair,
It’s sunlight playing peekaboo—
And choosing to wear shades of blue.

I have to admit, I think this is charming and sweet, and it made me laugh out loud.

But I’m a writer, and naturally my blood runs cold when I start to think my computer can write better than I do.

I’ve just read a book about AI that says, one day, machines might literally replace humans. There’s a theory floating around called AI Evolution. Apparently some people are thinking humans might actually exist only in order to create artificial intelligence. That’s our evolutionary role, they say, and once AI develops to a certain point, we will no longer be necessary. AI will continue to evolve and eventually colonize the universe, while humans will drop off the evolutionary tree just like the Neanderthals.

That probably won’t happen.

But the fact is, AI is already replacing people, in big and small ways.

Chatbots are taking the place of customer service reps. Software developers, artists, and video game creators are losing their jobs to AI. Robotaxis are already eating into Uber and Lyft drivers’ paychecks in big cities.

And in China, people can talk with digital replicas of loved ones who have died. It’s called AI cloning.

AI is even making inroads in mining: Rio Tinto is using autonomous haul trucks, and it uses AI to monitor that fleet. AI can also make mines safer for the humans who do work there, and it can make operations more efficient—it can predict equipment failures, detect gas leaks, and alert workers to rockfalls and structural failures.

But there are some jobs that appear to be safe from AI—jobs like nursing and teaching. Jobs that depend on what’s essentially human: caring, feeling, nurturing, and everything else that comes from the heart.

ChatGPT can write an excellent letter of congratulation or condolences, and it can even sound like it has a soul, but it doesn’t, and it eventually shows. AI has never grieved, dreamed, or paused in awe the sight of a sunset.

It can write a poem about why the sky is blue, but it can’t look into the eyes of the child who asked, and see the curiosity and excitement, and smile back.

It can answer why, but it can’t wonder why.

It can write a poem, draw a beautiful picture, and draft a letter full of sympathy or pride, but it can’t ponder, enjoy, delight, sorrow, or feel its eyes well up with gratitude.

Nobody knows what the soul really is, and that’s part of its beauty. We do know it’s what makes life feel like life. It’s the part of a human being where love lives, where music moves, where you carry your regrets, longings, and stubborn hope.

You can’t program a soul into a machine. You can’t replicate it with math. The soul isn’t a feature: It’s the reason.

The soul is presence: something only a living, breathing human can offer. It’s friends sitting together in gentle silence, family weeping at a funeral, parents holding a newborn with unspeakable joy.

Humans aren’t here just to function. We’re here to connect, and to feel. And no machine, no matter how advanced, can take our place in that.

AI can write a story—or a poem—but the soul is what makes humans storytellers. Humans don’t just describe events, we search for meaning in them. We turn our experiences into tales, grief into art, and confusion into poetry.

AI can remix what’s been said before. But it can’t ache, it can’t grow, and it doesn’t stop talking in the middle of a sentence because it suddenly remembered something someone said thirty years ago that touched the heart.

AI can imitate what it looks and sounds like to be human, but only a human has a soul.

And that’s something no algorithm, chatbot, or clone can replace.