Here's the beautiful irony: The more we automate, the more we need innovation. The more efficient our systems become, the more we need people who can imagine what those systems should do. The more powerful our tools grow, the more we need humans who can wield them wisely.
This creates what I call the Innovation Paradox: AI's greatest achievement might be forcing us to become more human. By handling the mechanical, it pushes us toward the meaningful. By mastering the routine, it demands we embrace the remarkable.
M.C. discovered this six months into her journey. "I'm doing the best work of my career," she told me during our interview. "Not despite AI, but because of it. AI handles everything that used to drain my creativity—the production work, the iterations, the technical specifications. Now I can focus on what I actually went to design school for: understanding humans and creating experiences that make their lives better."
She paused, then added something profound: "I used to be a designer who happened to be human. Now I'm a human who happens to design. That inversion changed everything."