• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, March 20, 2024

“Humans first.  Humans last.  The rest is up to us.”

That was a quote I heard while watching a panel at SXSW last week, and it resonated with me because of all the confusion around the state of AI.  In all the debates, we lose sight of the fact that humans are the ones creating AI, and it is up to us how and when we useit as a tool to better ourselves and our processes.

Ironically, the quote came in the context of two conversations about media creation.  I think the quote specifically came from someone at the New York Times, but it was echoed very much by an agency called Native Foreign and its Chief Creative Officer, Nik Kleverov.   He was talking about how AI is embedded in the creative process for video. It was the best explanation I had seen to date because he broke down the stages of creation and where AI was to be used, versus when humans are the focus. 

The Times was talking about AI in the context of running a news-based organization, while Native Foreign was talking about it from a creation and development point of view.  It was a tangible outline of the process rather than the theoretical one. For both companies, humans are still a big part of the process. For example, at a news-based organization, AI can be used for fact checking and other background tasks as well, but the job of reporting still comes down to humans.

All of this helped me cement my own point of view that AI cannot replace people, but rather replaces the most mundane parts of our roles and frees us up for the important stuff.

If you think back 30 years or more, our jobs were less efficient, but probably slightly more rewarding.  We created more than we “processed.” 

All this reminds me of a quote from the movie “Say Anything”:  “I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career."  That was John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler talking about his future, but it resonates in how these days most of our jobs revolve around process.

How much of your day is spent simply writing, and responding to emails and Slacks and text messages?   If you want to create and “do,” you have to book time in your calendar just to make it possible.

AI can help. The role of a human in the workforce should be to create and do things that cannot be replaced by a machine, and this is a wake-up call to all of us to that fact.  Human brains are not meant to be employed in an assembly-line model.  They are vast machines capable of so much more, and this is an opportunity to re-deploy them in that way.

AI is going to be used when we see fit to employ it, but it us up to us to determine when and how. Humans create the constraints and the strategies through which AI is used.  We then employ it, review the outcomes, and make decisions on what to do next.  This is the process that will succeed in this next wave of innovation, and this is how we should think about the future.  We can embed AI into steps along the way, but once again that is up to us, and we can’t lose sight of that fact. 

To that end, I am sure even Lloyd Dobler will be able to find a role he enjoys in this next wave of career stages.  Lloyd has probably been an executive at an agency for the last 15 years, and now he is excited about what the future holds for him.  Cheers to Lloyd.