The “Ai job-taker” belief is rooted in the devaluation of human creativity in others and ourselves. Such thinking is foolish for leaders that rely on inventive output.
“What I have now is more capable than any human chief of staff I’ve ever worked with.” wrote @rsarver on X about his experience building an OpenClaw Chief of Staff. The X article, currently with over 1 million views, is a sad confirmation of how creatively lost we’ve become.
“It never forgets a commitment, it handles the small stuff without being asked, flags the important stuff without being told, and it gets better every week. Plus it never sleeps and it never tires,” he writes.
What Sarver misses, and many leaders like him, is an understanding of what creative, empowered humans do: they create and challenge status quo. Ai does neither.
The absolutely best Ai can do is produce knock-offs. Ai is, by definition, status quo—it will never evolve. Ai’s knock-off knack isn’t a bad thing—copying existing solutions can leader’s must know the difference.
For decades, long before Ai, leaders have struggled to empower and embrace human creativity, favoring cheap creative knock-off output.
I have a graphic design degree and freelanced for 10 years for some larger companies. Clients demanded creativivity, but rejected the process.
Most CMOs preferred knock-off work. They’d start conversations with “think outside the box” but would grow uncomfortable, asking me to copy existing designs they liked. They confused conformity for creativity.
Directors copy blockbuster movies. Writers plagiarize writers. Artists paint in the style of popular artists. Musicians copy The Beatles, painters copy Picasso. Ai is just a faster. The distinction is impact. Originals change a culture. Knock-offs fade into obscurity.
If you read Sarver’s article, you’ll notice he prefers knock-off talent. Of himself.
He views the solution to a successful company as simply creating more versions of himself—this isn’t a selfish view, just an uniformed one.
Many successful leaders I’ve worked with make the same error. They have zero awareness of key employee contributions and the value of true human creativity and because of that they can’t replicate their previous successes.
Two leaders in particular come to mind, both with multi-million dollar exits. They never fully understood the value of their co-founders challenges to their authority, gut feelings, intuition, and “just trust me on this” conversations.
Great employees offer equal value—they don’t take orders, they know when to bend or break rules. They save you from yourself. They’re empathetic and listen to emotions, not words—stuff Ai can’t do and will never do.
Why can’t leaders make this distinction? Because even researchers don’t understand how human creativity works. It’s hard to qualify. It’s hard to understand. It’s hard to communicate. And because people can’t communicate or understand it— few value it.
In 2013, I wrote a piece on “fake” creativity at work for WSJ that launched my entire career in PR/comms. The argument I made was that leaders value the output of creativity, but not the process itself. “They don’t want creativity, they want the results of it.” I argue.
Creativity is messy, unorganized, frustrating and painful. Process helps, but doesn’t control it.
Ai is rational. Humans aren’t. Many leaders think human emotion is a bug, but in fact, it’s a feature.
Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin was irrational. Not only would an Ai likely have made the petri dish accident in the first place, but would also have not followed natural curiosity which would lead to the discovery.
George de Mestral discovered velcro because of an irrational irritation by sticky burs on his socks.
Post it notes, radar, x-rays, and even Viagra were all irrational pursuits because someone challenged or asked hard questions. (It was a side effect they decided to research!)
As leaders worship Ai knock-off output, I’m bullish on human creative output.
Knock-off leaders treasure size and scale. Large organizations can copy original work and crush creators. That’s their moat. BUT Ai drains that moat.
Ai brings size and scale to small teams. And this is the reality large organizations fear. That is why large organizations want it regulated, controlled, limited, and monitored.
Ai is not a job-taker. Ai is an enabler of human creative potential and a leveling of a very un-level playing field.
