August 18, 2026
Tiffany Kimball
What if, 20 years ago, you saw that headline? The death of the human writer? What on Earth does that mean? What other kind of writer is there? But now, in 2026, it makes a little too much sense. AI has made all of us writers a little nervous. Sweet Moses, we're thinking... is this it? Has human creativity started down the road to obsolescence?
I don't think so. And I'd like to talk about why.
First, let me reveal something. I wrote this entire blog post by hand. No AI was involved at all. And my guess is, you can tell. Not because you're analyzing the sentence structure or noticing a lack of em dashes. You can tell because you're a human, and I'm a human, and guess what: we have a sense that tells us when there's another human mind in the room.
That said, I use AI transparently to create blog posts for clients and/or my team. Especially for topics that are heavily informational or require research. I do that for the sake of speed and convenience, and for SEO purposes. Those posts serve a different purpose than creative posts like this one. But both are necessary.
I also find ChatGPT extremely helpful for all kinds of tasks. For example, I'm not a web developer, but I created this website with its help. I literally said, "teach me how to create a website in Webflow," and it walked me through all the steps. And, as it walked me through the steps, I learned how to do things on my own. And I began to notice when it gave me wrong answers, too. It was a fascinating process.
There is no denying the usefulness of technologies that improve our lives and reduce busywork. This is technology that gives ordinary people access to education and the ability to create in ways we couldn't before.
The fact that I could create a functional Webflow site with the help of an AI I spend $30 / month on is a micro-example of how society may, at some point, work as a whole. The argument would be that since I won't be paying a designer to do it, that designer will no longer have work. But I wouldn't have been able to pay a designer anyway. And it frees the designer up to do work that is different, and better.
The assumption is, of course, that AI cannot create the way humans do. That brings me back to my original question: will AI (as fascinating as it may be) end the usefulness of human writers?
First, let's figure out what we mean. Let's define "writer".
If a writer is just a person who researches data about topics and arranges that information into cohesive paragraphs, then yes, AI can do that better and faster than a human, and human writers are rendered pointless. If that's your job, I'm very sorry.
But if we define a writer as a person who has original ideas and attempts to express them in original ways, a human will always have the edge. Think of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, or anything by Hemingway, and you'll know what I mean. Those guys are famous for a reason. They both have a very distinct voice (saying things in a way nobody did before), and they say huge things in just a few words. That's what makes them fun to read.
Great writers do more than just convey information. They express human experiences and ideas in ways that connect us to ourselves and to each other. They reassure us, from behind the page, that yes, there is another human in the world who feels what you do. They make us feel less alone.
AI does the exact opposite thing. It only says things that have been said before. Unless prompted otherwise, it tends to say things in too many words. And, I'd argue, it makes us feel more alone because when we read something written purely by AI, we know there is no consciousness behind the words.
That said, AI is still useful. We just need to be very clear about what it is, what it does, and how best to use it.
Last night I did an experiment. First, I asked Claude to look at Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese and write me a similar poem about oak trees. Then I took the poem Claude wrote and asked my personal ChatGPT (which I call Jarvis) to tell me if it was written by a human or an AI. The answer was very interesting. Jarvis said it was 80% sure the poem was written by AI. It also recognized Claude's poem as a copy of Mary Oliver's style (I didn't tell it that).But here's the most interesting observation it made.It said: "AI can organize enormous amounts of information. It can identify patterns in someone's language. It can maintain structural coherence across 2,500 words. It can optimize headings. It can incorporate keywords. It can compare new writing against previous samples. It can notice recurring vocabulary and syntax. But the raw material came from somewhere real."
This is the point. "Somewhere real" equals Mary Oliver's soul. Without Mary Oliver, there could be no simulation of Mary Oliver.
AI is surreal. The Webster dictionary definition of surreal, just for fun, is: "marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream".
When we experience AI, our critter senses say: "This shouldn't exist. This is a mind with no experiences behind it." It's like an object in a Dali painting. A face propped up by poles, lying in a desert next to a clock. We, on the other hand, are real. Our cells multiply in our mother's womb. Then, we arrive screaming into a world full of strange sounds, blinding lights, completely helpless and dependent on others. Then we spend years and years struggling to learn an incredibly complex world through experiences, and attempting to avoid the many things that could kill us. We have each won our existence.
This is why AI will never replace human writers. It has no experiences to convey. But it can be a helper, assimilating the vast databank of knowledge we've all poured our experiences and knowledge into. It can draw conclusions based on pattern recognition and make predictions based on what has come before. And it can do all that at lightning speed.
It's an incredible technology. And we shouldn't be afraid of it. Because what makes us (and our writing) wonderful is the sweet taste of life and the fear of death. And those are things an AI will never be able to replicate.