The Secret AI Will Never Know

We are surrounded by clever-sounding statements these days, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence and the future of work. One that often does the rounds is: “AI won’t replace you. But the person who knows how to use AI better might.” It sounds motivational. But beneath that tone of encouragement lies something more unsettling, something that feels less like reassurance and more like a countdown.

Imagine this line in a different setting. Picture a farmer telling a bull, “Don’t worry, the tractor won’t replace you. But the bull that learns to drive it might.” It’s a strange picture: funny at first, but also deeply ironic. The bull, a creature bred to plough fields, is now being told to compete by learning to operate the very machine created to replace it. It’s not just about progress anymore. It’s about survival. The tool meant to help is now the bar to beat. And it’s not enough for the bull to just get stronger and keep doing its job well. It must now learn something outside its nature just to be allowed to stay.

That’s what the modern workforce is being told. On paper, AI is just a tool, just like any other invention in history. The printing press didn’t end storytelling. The calculator didn’t ruin math. The internet didn’t destroy books. But what makes AI different is its ability to imitate human thought, to create, summarise, edit, plan, and even judge. It doesn’t just support your work, it can do large parts of it. So when someone says, “AI won’t replace you,” what they might really be saying is, “It hasn’t replaced you—yet.”

What’s harder to admit is that many of those offering this advice are simply buying time. They are testing the waters. When you are not seeing, they are testing AI tools, cutting small corners, and automating small steps. Once they find that AI performs well enough for their needs, the story might change. The roles that once felt secure may quietly vanish, no longer needing humans to manage them. So that cheerful quote ends up sounding more like a gentle warning: “You’re still useful—for now.”

In that climate, what can you do? You cannot outpace a machine that runs 24/7. You cannot memorise more than something trained on the entire internet. You cannot analyse faster or sort cleaner. But you can look where it doesn’t. AI has blind spots. It lacks context, history, doubt, compassion, and love. It doesn't feel embarrassed when it's wrong. It doesn’t apologise or thank you with sincerity. It cannot truly understand trust, sarcasm, grief, or warmth. Your task, then, is not to match AI’s power, but to lean into what makes you human. To find those unpolished, inconvenient, emotional corners of life where machines still fail to follow.

And even that is not easy. It places enormous pressure on people to reinvent themselves constantly. To be part-coder, part-writer, part-designer, part-analyst, and full-time learner. The workplace becomes less about stability and more about staying in the game. The cost is emotional. You’re no longer just doing your job; you’re proving you’re not obsolete.

But maybe we need to pause and ask: Should that be the goal? Should the aim be to keep proving our worth to machines and systems, or should we be asking why we’re racing them at all? Why do we keep building tools and then expecting people to bend themselves out of shape to keep up with them? Shouldn’t the tools be built to serve people and not the other way around?

AI, like all powerful tools, depends on how we choose to use it. It can lift burdens, open access, and support creativity. But it can also quietly replace care with convenience and skill with speed. Whether it improves lives or quietly displaces them depends on the choices made: not by the tool, but by the humans who hold it.

And this is where we come full circle. AI can summarise data, but it cannot sense doubt or trust. It can mimic tone, but it doesn’t feel tone. And I’m quite certain its readers can’t feed it either. So what can we do?

Maybe the answer is not to become faster, sharper, or more machine-like. Maybe the answer is to turn back into humans again.

Spend time. Live. Breathe. Laugh. Cry. Meet friends without a reason. Visit an orphanage or an old-age home. Talk to someone who won’t boost your network but might change your heart. Play a game with a child. Listen to someone’s story. Step out into places that remind you of your own impermanence.

Because what AI cannot replicate, and may never understand, is the quiet, steady fire inside a human being. That stubborn spark that says, “I’ll keep going.” That strange, irrational faith that whispers, “It’s not over.” The sheer madness of hope in the face of failure.

AI can follow logic. It can learn from patterns. But it cannot understand why someone gets back up when every single sign says to stay down. It doesn’t know what it means to keep walking when your legs are trembling. It doesn’t know what it means to keep loving, trying, showing up when you’re out of strength.

Because no matter how smart AI gets,

It doesn’t know that sometimes, keeping a step forward when all odds are against you—That’s how winning is done.

Maybe the secret to surviving the age of machines isn’t buried in new skills or smarter tools at all.
Maybe it’s hidden in something we forgot.

Maybe it’s been with us all along.

 

 

Valaikaapu for the New Year

 

The sky gathers its clouds like elders preparing for a blessing.
Raindrops meet the lake, and bangles of ripples spread outward,
each circle a gentle ring of grace.
It is the valaikaapu of the heavens,
a celebration for the new year
still resting in the womb of time,
two or three months away from its first dawn.

Frogs croak in the distance,
and new blades of grass push through the softened earth.
Birds hide in their nests
like young girls shying away from the crowd.

Nature has already begun the music and the dance,
welcoming the child, a new year, 
before it even arrives.

#Rain #Valaikaapu #Ripples

𝗗𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀: 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗱, 𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘁, 𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴?

Sometimes I wonder how my art teacher’s brush seems to know stories that the world doesn’t.

This recent work of his made me stop.

Four girls. Eyes closed. Standing close. Not just in body, but in spirit.

One holds a boat. To me, she’s someone swimming against the tide, doing her best to stay afloat.

Another holds a plane. Maybe she’s the one who took the “safe” path. On the outside, she looks settled. But deep down, she still wants to fly.

The other two stand quietly. They hold nothing. And maybe, no one ever asked them what they really want. Maybe they don’t know what they want.

Interestingly, none of them have navels. That small detail stayed with me. It felt like they were free from the weight of the past. But is freedom enough if you don’t know where to go?

What struck me most is that three of them turn toward the one who has settled.

Do they admire her? Do they think she figured it all out? Or are they just looking for someone to follow?

To me, my teacher painted more than four figures.
He painted questions we rarely ask.
He painted choices. Compromises. And the quiet ache of unrealised dreams.
And that, I think, is what good art does.

Grateful to be learning from someone who teaches art and unveils life.
What do you see in it?

hashtag#Art hashtag#Dreams hashtag#Choices

Golden Storm

Draupathi had always loved the forest at the edge of Vaithara, a small, quiet town where days moved unhurried. The forest was her sanctuary, a place built of light, leaf, and silence. She came here most evenings after work, sketchbook under her arm, following the same worn path until the hum of traffic disappeared.

On the night everything changed, it felt different. You know how sometimes the air feels too still, and you cannot explain why it bothers you? The trees stood motionless, the usual chatter of birds oddly distant. Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath. Did you notice? We rarely do.

She sat on her favourite fallen log, pencil poised. The sun was painting the treetops in gold, each stroke soft and deliberate. She thought she had time.

Then the gold began to change. It thickened. It pulsed. And with it came a faint, acrid scent. Smoke?

“That’s not sunset,” she murmured.

The first flames appeared on the ridge, curling upward in the wind. Most people would have turned away immediately, but Draupathi… paused. There was something in the fire that felt familiar, almost like a memory she could not place. The way it moved – fierce yet graceful – made her think of hands shaping her from heat and ash long before she had ever set foot in this forest.

Was it music? Was it brushwork? The crackle became percussion, the arcs of flame strokes on a dark canvas.

Have you ever admired something you should have feared? That is where she stood, caught between awe and survival.

Then the wind shifted, sending a spray of embers across the clearing. She startled, and her sketchbook slipped from her fingers, fluttering to the ground, pages catching the glow of the fire. She turned to run – then hesitated.

The drawing lay face-up, a half-finished forest bathed in gold, mirroring the inferno beyond. She bent to snatch it, her palm slick with sweat. The paper gave under her touch, soft and damp, and she realised her thumb was smearing the faint graphite of her self-portrait in the corner.

Her graphite face blurred – almost gone. In another moment, so would she.

She ran until her lungs burned and her legs felt carved from stone. At the riverbank, she waded into the cool water, gasping, clutching the sodden paper. Across the current, the forest blazed – her forest – now a living sun collapsing into smoke.

For a long time, she just stood there, watching the gold fade into black. The air still carried the heat, and deep inside, something answered it – a spark that would never fully die. She looked at the smeared face in the corner of her sketch. It no longer belonged to her, not entirely. The forest had signed it now: in heat, in ash, in the truth that nothing stays as we leave it.

When she finally walked away, she did not look back. But in her mind, the storm still burned, and part of her still stood in that clearing, born of fire, trying to draw the moment before it all began.

#Fire #Passion #Art