He was polished, confident and, of course, on the speaker circuit.

His argument? That AI shouldn’t be allowed to gather intelligence on behalf of humans. That when someone puts content online, it’s only meant to be read, absorbed and acted upon by another human directly. Not searched, summarised, or interpreted by a machine.

To me, it sounded a bit like saying you shouldn’t be allowed to read unless you had perfect vision. That if you needed glasses or a magnifying glass, you were somehow cheating.

As someone dyslexic, who doesn’t come from an academic background but has spent a life building businesses through imagination, curiosity and hustle, AI hasn’t reduced me, it’s enhanced me. It fills the gaps in my attention and knowledge. It sharpens what’s possible. It’s a prosthetic for my intelligence. It’s not a threat to creativity, it’s a co-creator.

And I don’t just see this in publishing, the world I work in. I see it in medicine. In diagnostics. In climate science. In research that might save lives or even extend the life of the planet. AI might one day irrigate deserts, reduce emissions and slow extinction. And yes, it might just screen people like me for early signs of cancer at exactly the age my relatives began falling ill.

At a time when we are billions, spread thin across a stressed and overheating planet, it is not a coincidence that this new kind of intelligence has arrived. It may not feel spiritual, but it might be something close. A system smart enough to sift the chaos. To triage. To support. To balance.

Of course, this doesn’t always comfort those of us already stretched or uncertain. The pace of change is real. And many of the loudest voices we hear on this topic make their living helping us feel that fear. But here’s the thing: when the weaving loom arrived, there were people shouting exactly the same thing. The cloth industry didn’t end, it exploded. It became one of the largest global industries on Earth.

Change is always unsettling when it feels like it’s being done to you. But the reality is, it’s being done for us. The real work now is to stop flinching, stop falling for the idea that we’re being replaced, and start seeing this as a chance to do more. AI is not our adversary. It may just be the collaborator we need most.