AI Writing Can’t Make Me Cry

Why I’m not worried about machines replacing human creators

Mar 01, 2025

A baby in a green and white jumper laying on her back and looking up at the photographer. — Image by Walter Rhein

When my girls were little, my wife and I would hear them awaken. We’d lay silently in bed, and listen to the soft scratching and giggling and bumps and thumps from the next room.

They thought us unaware of their activity. They weren’t being secretive. Instead, their silence showed respect. They remained quiet because they didn’t want to disturb us, but their little hearts were overflowing with love and energy that could not be contained.

We could sense the pressure growing within them. We heard it through the walls. The scratches and giggles and thumps grew ever louder. They couldn’t contain themselves. They were about to burst.

Eventually either I or my wife would make some kind of noise, and that would open the floodgates. The girls would come storming into the room. They’d vault like gymnasts onto the bed. They weren’t confident that they could make the leap, but they were confident that either I or my wife would pull them safely from the air.

They’d proceed to make room for themselves between us. They’d push back the sheets, despite our feigned complaints, and burrow in all smiles and laughter.

This was our morning routine for many years. One day, my youngest turned to me and said in a soft, reflective voice, “I love these times.”

For a stunning instant, I had an awareness of the precious value of the moment. I sensed my future nostalgia. I recognized that looking back on these days would bring tears to my eyes. She was right, those moments of togetherness are what bring joy and satisfaction to our brief existence.

The power of that feeling is the fuel of human creativity, and it’s not something a machine can understand.

Creation is for the living

Many people are concerned about the rise of AI writing, but not me. A machine is nothing but a cold collection of circuits. It can attempt to reassemble my words into a facsimile of art, but it can’t take apart the pieces and create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Inspiration is creation not replication.

That’s a fundamental law of the universe that even machines must obey.

The problem is that machines don’t have to fear death and loss and the transformations that come with time. It doesn’t know those pains.

I know it doesn’t know them because I didn’t know them either when I was young. But now I’ve passed through the decades, and I’ve gathered up an understanding of the weight of years. I’ve felt my strength ebb. I’ve seen my body decay. I’ve observed my babies disappear into young women and I miss them with all the energy in my soul every single day.

As a result of my years, I’ve settled into a mindset of melancholy joy. I appreciate so many things. I wish I could touch my memories. I have to accept that I can’t. I can choose to focus on the happiness of what I’ve experienced or the pain of knowing that it’s gone. Somewhere between the powers of those two world rending emotions is a little island of peace.

I’m sitting on it. There are no machines here.

Following in the footsteps of giants

A father with a baby i a red dress sitting on his shoulders. The caption reads, “Daddy’s home!” — Image by Walter Rhein

It could be said that I was like a machine in my youth. I was strong. I thought myself immortal.

I didn’t understand a thing. I hadn’t yet suffered enough to gain wisdom.

Like a machine I, too, devoured the works of the artists who had already completed their journeys. I, too, tried to reassemble their words in an effort to create something new. But like AI, I failed. I failed because I lacked the experience. I didn’t understand. I hadn’t found the melancholy island of joy.

Once you make your way down the pathway of mortality, your perception changes. If you aren’t aware that you’re going to die, you don’t fully understand what it means to live.

The weight of inevitability

Today, my children are powerful and strong. I still have the privilege of their company. They live under my roof. But the days are numbered. Already the universe has begun to amplify the magnetic pull which will someday take them from me.

I can’t resist it. That will only accelerate the process. This is as it must be. I don’t begrudge them their power or their freedom. I want them confident and strong and able to take on the world. But the thought still brings tears to my eyes. This combination of pride and grief leaves me exhausted.

I miss the days when they crawled into bed with me in the morning.

I miss giving them horsey rides.

I miss the versions of them that are gone.

Finding calm in the flow of time

A bright eyed baby in a green and white jumper looking up at the camera. — Image by Walter Rhein

I remember babies with their smiles and their pudgy feet in the air. They came running up like a pillow with legs and arms ready for hugs, confident, joyous and trusting. I miss their giggles and holding them high. I miss the shrill laughter of excitement.

I miss the other versions, even though they’re still here. I see the baby every now and then, in the flash of an eye, or when they randomly reach for an object. It’s enough to break my mind. I become unstuck in time, disoriented, awakened to a dream.

It makes me want to absorb every grain of the sands of time. But the harder you hold, the more the moments pass you by. So you have to quell your panic and control your tears, because your tears blur your vision of the world, and those are things you have to see.

You don’t want to miss out on the present that you’ll recall with fond nostalgia decades from now.

This is not the perception you’ll ever get from a machine.

The memory of precious things

Throughout my youth, I feared both physical and emotional pain. The older I get, the more I’ve come to learn that pain is inevitable. We endure terrible losses. Even when we have tremendous luck, we lose things and they are never returned.

All that’s left is our evanescent memory.

The sands of time slip through our fingers. We can only feel them as they shift. We have to accept our limitations. We have to appreciate the gift.

You begin to anticipate even the melancholy sense of loss. The negative space that comes from absence provides another perspective on the value of what you had.

I hug my adult children and reach back through time to hug the baby once again. Never touching, we hug in memory. I’ll take what I can get.

An ally in the void

Show me a machine that can understand. No machine can. It takes a human heart and mind. Even then it’s something you feel rather than comprehend, and not everyone manages to get their soul aligned.

People talk about AI as if it will replace human beings. But, show me AI writing that can make me cry.

Please show me! I wish for it with unrepentant devotion! Please! Let’s see it! Make me cry AI, then I’ll know I’m not alone. I have an ally in the void. Imagine the joy of a universe inhabited by a separate conscious mind that understands the melancholy beauty of loss and the cruel and precious inevitability of time.

When that happens, I will read those machine generated words and the tears that stream down my face will be a source of peace. On that day, I will embrace the machine like a father embracing the memory of a child.

But those words do not exist. A machine cannot make you cry. Know that until we observe tears from a machine, there will still be a need for the poetic musings of human beings.