PILLAR 03
AI and the Future of Creativity
Protecting what makes us human when machines get smart.
PILLAR THREE OVERVIEW
In the 1950s, my father drew a cartoon of the future human. A giant head. A shrivelled body. One oversized index finger, forever pressing buttons. He meant it as a joke. It has stopped being funny.
Artificial intelligence is pushing us closer to that sketch. Big brains trained to optimise, detached from the body, reduced to tapping screens. The danger is not that machines will replace us. The danger is that we will replace ourselves, trading the effort, silence, and presence that make us whole for the efficiencies of an engineered world.
Tom Friedman and Craig Mundie call this era the Polycene. My response is specific: we need to upgrade our understanding of creativity to match the complexity of this moment. That means polycognition, polyvalency, and polytrophism.
KEY IDEAS
The Polycene
Friedman and Mundie’s term for an era where binary systems give way to poly ones across technology, geopolitics, climate, and cognition.
NYT, Nov 2025
Binary to Poly
Chips moved from serial to parallel. Culture moved from either/or to both/and. Creativity needs to make the same shift.
Kao framework
The Human Premium
Eight practices machines cannot simulate: struggle, presence, discernment, embodiment, story, awe, empathy, aspiration.
Op-ed, Yale Course
Enhancement vs. Replacement
Does AI augment your work or hollow it out? The answer depends on whether you’ve done the inner work.
Yale Course, Classes 5–6
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Friedman: Welcome to Our New Era
2025
The New York Times op-ed naming the Polycene.
Kao: The Fight to Stay Human
2026
The eight disciplines and the case for recovering the human premium.
Yale Course, Classes 5, 6, 8
2026
AI and creativity, the Polycene in practice.
THE JOURNEY
Explore other pillars that support my approach to creativity
01
Mastering
the How
Creativity as a teachable, learnable discipline.
02
Creative Mindset
The inner work of thinking differently. Discernment, empathy, struggle, awe.
04
The Polymath's Advantage
Thinking across boundaries, leveraging poly cognitive and polyvalent capabilities.
FOLLOW THE JOURNEY
A book, a course, a growing body of work, and a community of people re-imagining creativity for a new era. This is the beginning.