ArcaMax

I'm probably not supposed to admit this, especially as a writer, but I'm not afraid of AI. I don't think it's here to steal our souls or our jobs. In fact, I think it might help us rediscover what's uniquely human and how we feel about those core principles of ourselves.

According to the general vibe on social media, AI is the next tidal wave of doom, and we're all supposed to be building sandbag walls of suspicion. But I'm also a millennial, a writer, and a parent. I'm not afraid because I've seen some evolutions and wonder about this next stage.

Not evolution in the mostly easy, already there, sci-fi sense, but evolution the way humans have always done it: messily, imperfectly, by stumbling forward and figuring it out as we go. I don't think AI will replace us. I think it will push us to remember what humans have: our curiosity, our contradictions, our empathy.

That doesn't mean I don't have questions. I do. But they're not "Is AI going to take my job?" They're more like: "What happens when machines mirror our biases?" or "What happens when we lose the confidence to write our own messy first drafts because the algorithm's version feels safer?"

Still, I keep coming back to this: Fear hasn't helped us navigate any of our major shifts.

When I was last teaching college freshmen, before AI had really hit the mainstream, the biggest issue wasn't ChatGPT or machine-generated prose. It was what it's always been: intellectual laziness. Can you Venmo the nerdy kid $50 to write your final essay? Probably. Did that mean writing itself was dead? Of course not.

What we were missing wasn't originality. It was curiosity. A sense of ownership. Of unfolding something through language that hadn't quite taken shape in the mind yet.

We write to discover what we don't know. Writing isn't just about output; it's about becoming. Which is why, when students treat AI like a vending machine -- input prompt, receive essay -- they're not just short-circuiting the assignment. They're short-circuiting a chance to know themselves better.

But here's the thing: Not everyone's in the same place with writing. Just like we don't let 10-year-olds drive, we also don't hand a teenager the keys to AI and expect them to steer with purpose. Perhaps we need to view AI more like a car: not inherently bad, but powerful. And like a car, its impact depends on who's behind the wheel and what they've been taught about the road.

I use AI sometimes. I've had moments where AI helped me see the thoughts I was already circling but couldn't quite pull apart. It didn't replace my thinking. It revealed where my thinking could go next. It also corrects my grammar, checks my atrocious spelling, and really fights me on my use of passive voice. But the overall voice? The doubt, the weird metaphors? That's me. AI can offer a map, but it can't decide where I want to go.

Maybe AI can help us go in those directions.

As a millennial, I grew up in analog and adapted to digital. I wrote high school essays longhand and built college resumes on floppy disks. I remember when asking for help meant cornering a TA after class, not chatting with a predictive model. And maybe that's why I treat AI more like a collaborator than a threat. Not because I trust it implicitly, but because I trust myself enough to edit, reshape, reject, and reframe what it gives me. That's what we need to retain with students.

Maybe that's the real opportunity here, not to hand writing over to machines, but to teach the next generation how to use it without losing themselves. AI can offer a draft, a prompt, or a pattern, but it can't teach you what matters to you. It can't replace the quiet, hard work of figuring out what you believe and how to say it.

That's still where the magic is.

And, if we're careful, curious, and just a little bit rebellious, we can use this new tool not to skip the hard parts, but to find our way more deeply into them.

======== Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com. To learn more about Cassie McClure and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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