Why?

On November 28, at the maiden edition of TalkComms, I was honoured with the opportunity to share publicly — across a room full of students and media professionals — my perspective on why AI is more than a tool but what I call a co-creator.

AI has been described as 'just' another technological tool that makes life easier, faster, and boosts productivity. However, if you stick with this widely accepted narrative, you’ll become one of those who will be weeded out in the long run, because for the first time in human history, we have entered an age where our own invention can co-create with us.

What do I mean by AI as a co-creator?

AI as a co-creator refers to the role artificial intelligence plays in collaboratively generating ideas, solutions, or experiences with humans. In this model, AI does not replace human creativity but acts as an intelligent partner that contributes insights, and variations that enhance the human creator’s vision.

Since civilization began about 5,000 years ago, humans have never created a tool that could rival their intelligence. The invention of writing was used to advance knowledge. The industrial age brought mechanized production. And the dawn of the digital age led to the liberalization of knowledge and the connectivity of the world through social media.

In all these phases, humans came together to build; they brainstormed, and ultimately their ideas were carried out by technology — unquestioned.

That is changing fast.

During this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad, AI models developed by OpenAI and Google DeepMind achieved gold-medal-level performance.

In the words of Elon Musk, “AI is already better than most doctors.”

Although experts argue that AI doesn’t truly have an IQ, when subjected to certain IQ test sections, some advanced AI models scored as high as 130 — which is the level of what is called 'very superior or gifted intelligence.'

So my question is: why would you treat something with such capacity as just another tool?

The reason I have long argued that AI should be treated as a co-creator is not because it is now a human being or necessarily on the same level as humans. AI does not — and probably will not — possess all the sensitivity, creativity, psychology, or nuances of being human.

Yet, for you as an individual, AI contains within it a vast reservoir of information — context, history, patterns, and possibilities — that unless you treat it as something on your level, you won’t be able to push it to give you all the depth it carries.

Stop treating AI like that fresh graduate with limited industry exposure whom you assume you can’t learn anything from. Treat it as being on par with your capability, and then bring in the nuances of being human.