AI Can Never Make the Sky

Every morning, I take a picture of the sky and send it to Nancy and our friend Linda. Linda is somewhere between 75 and 80. We met her while volunteering at the senior center during COVID. At some point over the past several years, we started a group text thread to say good morning.

I usually send a photo of the sunrise, and Linda shares a GIF with images of puppies or flowers, and sometimes prayers. Linda is always so grateful for the photos, and I love our text thread that keeps us all connected every morning.

This morning, as I got ready to take a photo of yet another gorgeous sunrise. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I took a year’s worth of photos and put them together in a slide show?”

Then I thought I could probably do that easily with AI. How sneakily this tool has made its way into my mental toolbox.

We can create things like that so easily now that they lose their specialness. When my mom turned 80, I collected 80 video clips from friends and family all over the world and pieced them together using iMovie. I did the same thing for my daughter when she turned 18. For me, the effort behind the project created the meaning.

In 1977, when I was in fourth grade, I loved the movie Pete‘s Dragon. It starred Helen Reddy and an adorable little runaway orphan boy named Pete. I deeply related to the sad little boy who had a magic dragon as a best friend. The dragon helped Pete out of any trouble he found himself in. Everybody, except Pete (and eventually Helen Reddy), thought the dragon was imaginary.

Whenever Pete was in trouble or in need, the dragon showed up and saved the day. In the movie, the dragon was animated while the rest of the cast was in human form. I thought the fact that a cartoon character could be superimposed onto a regular movie was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. These days, with AI technology, that would be like taking a photo using film.

It’s true that AI is just another notch in the belt of technology innovation, but it’s a big one that’s impacting creativity and critical thinking in a massive way. I can despair about how the proliferation of AI will impact humanity. With a few strategic prompts, AI can create a sunrise like the pictures I send to Linda, but it can never create a lived experience. This morning, recognizing this truth, I had a glimmer of hope about the future of the world.

AI can’t make the sky. It can produce images of the sky, but it can’t create the experience of actually seeing the sky. AI can’t make the exact sensation of a gust of wind that smells exactly like cut grass at the exact moment that the sun is reflecting on the lake. And even if it could bottle up the smell and blow a temperature-controlled fan just the right place, AI couldn’t capture the spontaneous smile and warm brown eyes of the bike rider who rides by just as you’re noticing the reflection of the sun light on the water and the smell of fresh cut grass while the sweat on your brow is cooled by the wind.

I marvel daily at the V-formation of geese flying south above me. I delight in seeing my elderly neighbor Bob wandering up the hill as I walk down, his bright smile and tuft of white hair clearly giving him away. When we cross paths, we always chat and the warm smile from an elder comforts me as I make my way into my old age. AI can’t recreate that.

As I write this, I am in central California, where some mornings, the clouds are below us, hiding the ocean like a protective blanket, giving the sea a chance to rest before it wakes up for the day. Only the just-right amount of sunlight and wind will move the cloud blanket off the water. AI might try, but I know in my bones that it can’t recreate this.

AI does scare me. I worry about the human brain deteriorating, and the long-term impacts of how humans will evolve with this diminished expectation of patience, focus, hard work and creativity. But I’m not as scared as I used to be. I’ve even started using AI myself.

I use it to create case studies that include relevant content for my Gen Z community college students. I use it to tweak recipes. I even used its help to edit a paragraph for a website recently. It’s true that AI can do many things that make life a little easier.

But it won’t necessarily make life better, and it will never be able to make the sky.