I’ve been telling stories for a living for more than 30 years.
As a journalist reporting for the Associated Press, UPI, and Scripps-Howard newspapers. As a communications leader building digital and content practices at Edelman and WPP agencies such as Hill+Knowlton, Group SJR and Burson. And now as the person who leads storytelling for PwC’s AI and emerging technology group in the United States, translating what the machines can do into something people can actually understand and care about.
So I’m not an AI skeptic shouting from the sidelines. I work inside this technology every day. I think it’s remarkable.
I also think it has the potential to make the world very, very boring.
AI can now write almost anything, instantly, competently. That sounds like a gift, and in some ways it is. But “competent” and “instant” applied to everything, everywhere produces a flood of content that is technically fine and emotionally dead.
The same LinkedIn post. The same launch copy. The same executive message, carefully saying nothing (my God, lawyers must love it).
For people whose job is to communicate, this is the real risk. That a machine makes your work indistinguishable from everyone else’s — and worse, that you let it happen.
Siliconscious is my argument against that kind of world.
Every other week, I write about staying creatively human: how to keep judgment, emotion, and specificity in work that machines are trying to average out. It’s for communicators, marketers, content and brand people, and the leaders who depend on them. It’s smart, it’s honest, and — fair warning — it has a point of view and occasionally a sharp tongue. Gotta be me, after all.
I believe that storytelling ultimately is about sociology, not technology, and that real human storytelling is becoming more valuable, not less.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, I’d love to have you.
— Gary