Maybe we are not afraid of losing jobs to AI. Maybe we are afraid of losing the drama.

For decades, industries such as advertising and filmmaking have thrived on performance. The pitch room. The dazzling confidence. The carefully staged myth. Half the job was theater.

AI does not perform. It does not sweat under pressure or rehearse charisma. It does not master the subtle dance of persuasion. It just produces. And perhaps that is what makes people uneasy. Not the fear of being replaced, but the loss of spectacle.

Scroll through your feed and you will see the two loudest extremes. On one side are the alarmists insisting AI must be shunned. On the other side are opportunists who parade generic outputs as achievements. A clumsy video. A soulless render. A banal essay. Posted with the pride of discovery.

This is not innovation. It is mediocrity wearing a badge and calling itself progress. These works are experiments at best, drafts at worst. Useful for practice, but hardly the magnum opus their creators pretend it to be. The louder the celebration, the hollower the work. And yet people applaud. Because convenience masquerades as creativity.

Picture it this way. AI is not the apocalypse. It is not a savior either. It is a tool. Like a camera. Like an editing suite. Like the internet itself. In the right hands, it stretches imagination. In the wrong hands, it exposes the lack of it.

What matters now is not whether AI takes over, but whether creators still carry the intent and taste that give stories their soul. Without that, AI is just an echo chamber of convenience. With it, AI becomes a collaborator that pushes boundaries we could not cross alone.

Perhaps the real disruption is this. The work will remain, but the drama may not. And maybe that is what unsettles us the most.

Haroon Riaz is a documentary filmmaker, blogger, a communications consultant, and an advertising creative director. Natari (2021) is his debut feature as a director. Haroon is also the screenwriter of multiple award-winning feature documentary Indus Blues (2018).

Also published on:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/maybe-we-afraid-losing-jobs-ai-drama-haroon-riaz-qazxf/