PopTech Talk: Highlights
The best way to use AI isn’t to ask it to be creative — it’s to ask it to help you be more creative.
Signature Ideas
Core Philosophy
The best way to use AI isn’t to ask it to be creative — it’s to ask it to help you be more creative.
Don’t outsource the thinking. Use AI as a thinking partner, a coach, a Socratic questioner — not a prose-vending machine.
Instead of asking AI to write for us, we can ask it to ask us the right questions — the ones that surface our own best ideas.
On Writing and Creativity
The Hard Part
Writing is hard — not because typing is hard, but because thinking is hard. It’s difficult to take something that makes sense inside your own head and express it in a way that makes sense to someone else.
When I get stuck, I don’t want a machine to write for me. I want a conversation that helps me find my way back into the work.
AI doesn’t replace the hard part of writing — it helps you stay with it longer.
On the Role of AI
Man With Machine
We’ve been framing AI as a competitor — human versus machine. But what if it’s not man versus machine, but man with machine?
Creativity in the digital age isn’t about what AI can do — it’s about what we can do with AI.
AI can be your writer’s room when you don’t have one — a partner that helps you think, question, and discover.
Socratic AI
Flipping the Script
Socratic AI flips the script. Instead of giving answers, it asks questions that make you think more deeply.
It’s not a tool for replacing human creativity — it’s a catalyst for it.
AI should push us to do our best work, not let us off the hook from doing it.
Personal Moments & Philosophy
Why I Write
I became a writer because I have ideas, emotions, and stories that matter to me. The last thing I’d want is for a machine to predict what I might say.
When I feel stuck, I can open a dialogue — not with a collaborator in the room, but with an AI that helps me remember what I wanted to say.
Writer’s block is the feeling of being alone. AI can help make the creative process less lonely.
Audience Q&A Highlights
The Journey, Not the Assembly Line
Writing shouldn’t be an efficient assembly line. It’s supposed to be a journey — but AI can help us stay on that journey instead of walking away from it.
I don’t want AI to rewrite my drafts. I want it to help me see what’s working and what’s not — so I can rewrite it myself.
We should hold sacred the human side of writing — the longhand drafts, the walks, the coffee-shop notebooks — while still using AI to expand our creative reach.