What’s the most important question right now?

What do we, as humans, want to become better at?

AI can already summarize, translate, sort, predict and organize better than most of us. But it’s easy to forget, when interacting with it, that it’s a machine on the other side of the conversation. It has knowledge, but not wisdom. Context, but not experience. Language, but not creativity. Those are purely – exclusively – human traits. By leveraging AI effectively, we give ourselves the bandwidth to really lean into what we actually want to do, not just what we have to do. The future is not humans versus machines. It’s humans deciding which parts of being human are too important to outsource.

Where are we taking AI too seriously, and where not seriously enough?

We are taking AI too seriously as an artist. So many people are focused on whether it can write a novel, replace a journalist, make a movie or produce a TV show. I don’t want to watch an AI movie, read an AI book, or consume news produced by AI – and I don’t know anybody who does.  I want all of these things done by people, who’ve been enabled by AI. The displacement concerns are real: some jobs will change, some will shrink and some will disappear. The goal must be to help bring people through the change, not leave them behind.

At the same time, we are not taking AI seriously enough as infrastructure. The big change will happen in the most mundane of places: filling out forms, creating invoices, organizing research. The tasks few people are passionate about, but everybody spends half their life doing. AI will not replace human judgment. But it may finally remove some of the friction that has limited people’s apertures to think bigger and better.

What future are you looking forward to?

The future where technology gives us more time to pay attention. For journalists in particular, that means less time copying public records requests from one form to another. Less time writing emails nobody reads. Less time searching through twelve PDFs to find one particular quote. More time asking better questions, talking to people, noticing trends, and making things. The best future is not one where AI does everything for us. It is one where it gives us back enough time to remember what we actually wanted to do.

What’s a good website?

I started my career in local radio, so I absolutely love Radio Garden. You spin a virtual globe, click on a city and hear whatever is playing on the radio there. Tokyo talk radio. Nigerian pop. A news bulletin from Iceland. A college station in Ohio that sounds like it’s broadcasting from a basement – because it probably is. Also, it’s an iPhone/Android app – so you can take it on the go.