Last weekend I was at the Royal Albert Hall to watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy, all three films, with a live orchestra and choir.
The music came through the air and I could feel it. When the soloists performed, adults and children both, I had goosebumps. There is something about being in a room with 5,000 people, all of you held by the same thing at the same moment, that cannot be replicated.
I spend much of my working life thinking about AI. Where can it create value. Where can it remove friction. Where can it change what is possible in medicine, in research, in business. I believe in that potential. I argue for it, publicly and with clients, regularly.
But sitting in that hall, there are also the places where AI should not be used.
Creating art is inherently human. This is not because AI lacks the technical capability to produce something that resembles it. Real art requires being moved. Being inspired. Feeling wonder. None of that is available to a machine.
The debate about AI and creativity tends to focus on outputs. Can it write? Can it compose? Can it generate an image that looks like a painting? These are the wrong questions. The right question is what is actually happening when a human makes something. The answer has nothing to do with technical execution. It has everything to do with the experience of the artist and their need to express something felt, seen, or understood in a way that only making it can resolve.
A young soloist from the children’s choir performing in front of thousands of people is not producing an output. He is doing something that will stay with everyone in that room, including him.
I think that AI has amazing potential, but there is the question of where it should and shouldn’t be used. My answer is to give it the mundane, the inefficient, the processes no one wants to do anyway. Give AI the things that drain human time and energy without returning anything meaningful.
Keep the things that make us human exactly where they are.