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A Twilight Zone episode from 1959 predicted the AI debate we're having right now....
A man imprisoned on a distant moon is given a robot companion; one that looks human, talks human, learns him, plays games with him. He rejects her completely at first. She's not real. She can't feel anything. She doesn't know what it means to be lonely. Then, slowly, he falls in love with her anyway.
This episode aired 67 years ago and it's playing out again right now in journalism, in advertising, and in every business trying to figure out where AI belongs. In this episode, Reilly Newman connects two things that went viral on LinkedIn the same week. A Wall Street Journal op-ed writer used AI to write an opinion piece, got called out publicly, and responded with a shrug of course I used AI, what year do you think it is? And Parker pens ran a billboard that read: "Sorry. I shouldn't have asked Claude to write my vows. Please don't leave me." Two opposite reactions to the same technology. Both revealing something true.
The question at the center of both: why are we completely fine with AI writing an email, a text reply, a quarterly report... but deeply uncomfortable with the idea of AI writing a love letter or a wedding toast?
It's the same technology. The same output. Why does the context change everything?
Because it doesn't matter... until it matters.
Reilly applies this directly to business. The brands and restaurants that are automating the wrong things (the front-of-house human moments) and why In-N-Out paying their employees well enough to act like waiters in a fast food restaurant is one of the smartest brand moves in the industry.
Why the Etsy handwritten note on a package works even when it's clearly part of a process. And where the invisible line actually sits between AI being a productivity tool and AI becoming a brand liability.
His principle: the more something is intended to impact a person emotionally, the less AI should be involved in creating it.
The more tangible and human a product or interaction is, the more handmade it should feel.
Business is transactional. Brand is relational.
Use AI for the transaction. Protect the relationship.
This one is for anyone trying to figure out where AI ends and where being human has to begin.
