Writers and communicators, the world desperately needs us right now. 

It’s time to be informed, candid, and engaged. We can’t avoid the AI conversation any longer. We shouldn’t avoid it. It’s our job as communicators to help each other process perhaps the most consequential invention of our time.

We’re already seeing the undeniable signs of AI changing global society. It’s embedded in our phones, our workplaces, our healthcare system, our governments. Personally I think that we’re past the point of no return. 

We need to help each other adapt. As communicators, we have a responsibility to help each other process the transition. 

We need to have hard conversations with each other. 

A good example from history? The invention of the printing press in 1440. History tells us how religious leaders and governments responded, but we don’t hear much about cultural adjustment. 

Imagine the conversations around dinner tables and social gatherings in those early days. Jobs lost, knowledge gained. Fear and division about a technology that truly transformed the world.

Tension was high, opinions were strong. People were sorting through their feelings.

In 1468, Bishop Giovanni Andrea Bussi said, “In our time, God has given us a holy gift… printing has made it possible for even the poorest person to buy books cheaply and form a library.”

Sounds familiar, right? Positive, hopeful words about a world-changing technology. 

But like today, there were doomers as well. 

In 1473, Dominican friar Filippo de Strata wrote, “The pen is a virgin. The printing press is a whore.” Candid (albeit vulgar) sentiment showing the strength of the debate some thirty years after the invention itself. 

We are at a similar junction now – perhaps an even more monumental one. We’ve created an intelligence that can only be described as alien, something that thinks and reasons through completely different cognitive processes than we do.

Writers and communicators, it’s time to do our jobs. 

Engage the conversation. While we still have time.