But AI can’t decide what’s worth saying. It can’t express feelings, because it doesn’t have them and never will. It has no stakes. AI has an echo, but it doesn’t have a voice.

Siliconscious is a newsletter for communicators, marketers, and leaders navigating a moment when machines can produce infinite, competent, forgettable content. It’s about protecting the human craft of storytelling — and using AI without disappearing into the machine.

Because if stories aren’t ultimately about people, then they aren’t about anything.

The world doesn’t need more content. It needs more human stories.

Every organization now has a machine that writes. If your job is to make meaning with words or images, that should focus you, not scare you. Human stories have singular fingerprints that can’t be replicated by another person, much less a machine.

The parts of your work a machine can copy were never the valuable ones anyway. The difference, relevance, and resonance of our work depend on something AI cannot replicate: us.

What’s in it

Every issue does at least one of three things: makes sense of something happening in AI and communication, teaches a piece of craft, or tells a story that makes a human point.

What it won’t do is waste your time. No tool roundups. No breathless hype. No doom (well, okay, maybe a little doom). Just a clear-eyed look at how to stay human in the age of AI.

So, who’s behind this?

Gary Goldhammer has spent more than 30 years as a journalist and as a communications leader at global agencies. He now sits inside PwC’s AI and emerging technology group in the United States, where he leads storytelling for teams building the future. He’s also a novelist, a musician, a comedy nerd, and a dad who can still embarrass his adult daughter on cue.

He is, in his own words, an AI-forward human committed to staying human in the age of AI.

Start with one issue.

If it’s not for you, leave. My self-esteem can take the hit. If it is, you’ll have found the rare newsletter that respects your time and your craft.