Effective Communicators Will Harness, Not Surrender to AI’s Capabilities
11/12/25 – – The advance of generative artificial intelligence has prompted debate over the future of human communication. We are a species of storytellers. But will there be a need for us to express ourselves or transfer knowledge if AI can do it for us?
A recent Forbes.com article headlined “Are There Any AI-Safe Jobs Left? Microsoft’s Surprising Data” listed writers, authors, historians and journalists among the top 10 occupations Microsoft researchers found to be “facing the highest AI disruption.” Bad news for tomorrow’s Shakespeares, Rowlings, McCulloughs and Cronkites.
Reading the Microsoft warnings with self-interest, I began to worry about the survival of my own profession. My job is to help people communicate.
And I found no solace in the jobs ranked safest. In the top 10 are phlebotomists and embalmers. (Confession: I know what embalmers do, but I had to use AI-enabled Google search to discover that a phlebotomist is “a healthcare professional who collects blood samples from patients for diagnostic testing, blood donation or other medical purposes.”)
Gordon Lightfoot to the Rescue
Thankfully, my anxiety dissipated over the weekend when I read a fascinating article in Smithsonian Magazine titled “Nobody Knows What Sank the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald.’ But Its Doomed Final Voyage Will Always Be America’s Defining Shipwreck.”
Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the doomed freighter’s November 10, 1975, voyage on ferociously stormy Lake Superior, assistant digital editor Ellen Wexler highlights the role Gordon Lightfoot’s recording “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” has played in keeping the legend alive.
Lightfoot began to compose the song immediately after reading a Newsweek account of the disaster, which claimed all 29 crew members’ lives. The article began: “According to a legend of the Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumee ‘never gives up her dead.’” This touched Lightfoot’s heart and imagination, inspiring his first verse:
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee.
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.
Newsweek also reported that the ship, which was bound for Detroit, sank just “15 miles from the relative calm of Whitefish Bay.” Lightfoot captured the added tragedy of this fact in his poetic lyrics:
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put 15 more miles behind her.
AI Storytelling is Derivative
What does all this have to do with AI’s impact on human communication?
With all due respect to Microsoft, I would argue that the Newsweek journalists reporting the contemporaneous news and the song writer conveying the horror and loss that still hold our attention a half century later, communicated in ways large language models will never duplicate.
No question, an AI query regarding the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald yields plenty of facts and commentary in seconds. But the information is derivative, synthesizing the words of writers, authors, historians, journalists and even song writers. While that’s useful, missing is new, original thought, as well as the empathy and human connection that inspired Lightfoot and has defined memorable, moving storytelling for centuries.
More than retaining facts, we remember how Lightfoot’s haunting melody, lyrics and voice made us feel.
There’s Hope for Humanity and My Job
My conclusion: Putting aside AI hyperbole, it’s more likely that harnessing, not surrendering to the capabilities of AI (what the Forbes article characterizes as “disruption”) will make writers, authors, historians and journalists even better communicators; not put them out of work.
On Sunday, people gathered at the Mariners Church in Detroit, just as Newsweek reported they did 50 years ago, to ring the church bell 29 times. Lightfoot’s language:
In a musty old hall in Detroit, they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral.
The church bell chimed ’til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
I also said a prayer for the sailors, their families and Gordon Lightfoot, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 84. The connection I felt with them through communication made me feel much better about my profession . . . and my decision to withdraw from the online certification courses I’d signed up for in phlebotomy and embalming.
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