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| Nathan Miller |
It masquerades as a brain, but without human judgment it’s only noise.
At 2:37 a.m., I was still staring at a blinking cursor, drafting a speech that would be delivered at the United Nations in just a few hours. Every phrase would be parsed by diplomats, journalists, allies and adversaries alike. The wrong word could be read as a shift in policy or an intentional diplomatic slight.
Those nights as a speechwriter for Israel’s Mission to the United Nations were brutal—but they made me a better writer. Speeches went through dozens of revisions. Wrestling with language at impossible hours sharpened my judgment and forced me to refine my craft. Today, when I think back on those late-night struggles, I can’t help but wonder how different they might have been if I’d had access to artificial intelligence.
The New Editor in the Room
Writing has always been an iterative process. The first draft is almost never the final draft. Good writers refine, edit and sharpen ideas—often with the help of an editor or trusted colleague. Now, AI can take on some of that role.
Used well, it can act as a supercharged thesaurus, a nimble fact-checker, and a tireless sparring partner. With the right prompts, AI can generate alternatives in seconds that might take a human hours. But if you simply ask it to “write something” without bringing your own perspective, the results will be shallow, inaccurate and sometimes absurd.
AI isn’t a substitute for thought. It’s an amplifier of it.
Espresso and Iteration
My morning coffee ritual offers a useful metaphor. At home, I use a manual espresso machine. It’s demanding. Grind size, tamping, water pressure—get any of them wrong, and the shot is ruined.
At the office, I use an automatic machine. Press a button and a decent cappuccino pours out. It’s fast, consistent, and “good enough” when time is short. Both have value. Sometimes I want the art and control of the manual process. Sometimes I need the efficiency of the automatic.
Writing with AI works the same way. There is no substitute for the craftsmanship of shaping words. But there are moments when leaning on automation makes sense. The key is knowing when to grind the beans yourself—and when to press the button.
Tools Don’t Replace Craftsmen
A piano doesn’t compose a sonata, and a stethoscope doesn’t heal a patient. They are tools that extend human capability—not replace it. The difference with AI is that it masquerades as a brain. Because it can string words together, we’re tempted to treat it as an independent mind. That’s the biggest mistake. AI doesn’t have perspective, lived experience, or judgment. It is not a thinker. It is a tool—powerful, yes, but still a tool. The responsibility to create belongs to us.
The Risk—and the Opportunity
The real risk of AI isn’t that it will erase creativity. It’s that we might let it dull our own, outsourcing originality to an algorithm. If that happens, we won’t just lose jobs—we’ll lose the discipline that has sharpened human thought for millennia.
From the cave paintings of early humans to the plays of Shakespeare, storytelling has always been elemental to who we are. As Yuval Noah Harari notes in Sapiens, it was our unique ability to share stories that allowed humans to cooperate in large groups and build civilizations.
AI can either continue that trajectory—helping us become sharper, faster, more creative storytellers—or it can blunt our senses, creating a society divided between those who know how to use it as an amplifier and those who let it replace their own voice.
AI may assist with the words, but only humans can tell the story.
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Nathan Miller is the founder and CEO of Miller Ink, a strategic communications firm. He previously served as the chief speechwriter for Israel’s mission to the United Nations.
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