I have spent thousands of hours writing books and decades leading communications teams, while testing ideas in the “real world.” That long life of learning and leading has taught me something many miss in today’s AI debates: a tool only becomes powerful when real expertise is already in place.

I use AI every day. Not as a shortcut, but as a partner. It helps me scan information quickly, test narrative angles, and surface new possibilities. Those outputs matter only because I already know how to judge, refine, and shape ideas into something meaningful.

Without that background, AI is just noise.

This is why the hand-wringing over “AI plagiarism” in universities is so revealing. Students who lean on AI to produce work they can’t create themselves (by themselves or with the guidance of caring, professional faculty members) undercut their own education. They get the appearance of knowledge, not the substance. Professors are right to worry: when novices outsource the struggle, they graduate with hollow skills.

So when I hear, “AI makes people lazy” or “AI kills creativity,” I push back. Bad writing and shallow research existed long before machine learning. The problem is not the technology, but rather how unprepared people are to use it well (or properly).

The real question is: what happens when AI is in the hands of people who already bring discipline, judgment, and creativity? This is where the true frontier lies. It should unsettle us, because the threat is not AI. We suffer from our failure to cultivate and reward mastery in the first place.