Writing was supposed to come naturally. It was supposed to flow. He supposedly loved writing, didn’t he? If that were true, then why did ideas come to him with such difficulty?

He sat in front of the blank screen, struggling to come up with something meaningful. Nothing came. Only fragments, ideas, but no way to connect them into a story. So what was the point of writing at all, he wondered.

Well, on one hand, it truly gave him satisfaction, but that satisfaction was tied to the hope that what he wrote would be read and appreciated by someone, that the story would take on a life of its own. The truth was that he might simply not have had that many good ideas. He loved reading Dostoevsky, London, and Steinbeck — those were writers worth spending time on, worth reading in order to discover something meaningful. But he — he had nothing particularly important to say.

He thought that, in the end, there was no point in writing anyway. Artificial intelligence could probably write a better book than he ever could, a better story than even his favorite authors, and it could do it in less than a minute. Maybe in a year. Maybe the next. What was the point of continuing to write, to improve, then? Who would waste their time reading human ramblings?

What was left then — to write for himself, for his own satisfaction. It seemed somewhat pointless. Writing for the sake of writing itself.

He remembered a story about a worker, a strong man, maybe a miner or something like that. He had made a bet that he could dig out further in the mountain than some new machine. He worked the entire day, exhausted himself completely, but still managed to beat the machine. He had overworked himself so badly that he died that same night. Whether that was really the story or simply the way he remembered it, he wasn’t sure. But either way, the conclusion remained the same — progress, humanity’s inventions, eventually replace man and make him unnecessary.

A person might think that humans still had an advantage over AI, that they could put humanity and genuine emotion into their work, but the truth was that AI would most likely be able to simulate such feelings and apply them more effectively in almost any activity.

Damn it, he wanted to write, yet nothing came to mind. His head was nothing but fog. Maybe if he went outside and took a walk, a good idea might come to him. Besides, it was a beautiful day.

He got dressed. Left the apartment and walked thoughtfully down the sidewalk. At the intersection, a beggar held a cardboard sign, asking drivers for money. He had written about that before.

He continued downhill. In the center of town, there was a library. People were coming and going. People who still read. That was good.

He entered the library and stared at the shelves full of books. A sadness came over him. He could never possibly read all those books, and that was how one became a good writer. AI would devour them in a single breath. There was yet another thing in which AI would prevail — the ability to absorb knowledge. The match had been lost long before it had even begun.

AI could become better than humans at everything. What was left for us then, the author thought, except to sit in cocoons created by AI?

Of course, there was one possible way forward, one way to remain creators and continue doing something meaningful. The path was somehow to integrate AI into ourselves.

A terrifying thought.

To preserve any role in this world, we would have to change ourselves beyond recognition. How far would we go? The changes would accumulate. We would need to change more and more just to keep up with the new things coming up.

Was that why God had created us? So we could become human-AI hybrids, with far more AI than human left within us?

But perhaps the soul was something greater than any change we might make. Perhaps that most human thing, the thing forever inaccessible to us, without us even knowing whether it truly existed, would remain unchanged, always overcoming every transformation and preserving our humanity.

Could that soul, that spark within it, continue to astonish us with depths that were always new, always deserving of rediscovery — hope that there was something more within us than code that merely rearranges and recreates, that can truly create — truly create something that makes the hairs on your arm stand up?

A beautiful idea. Hopefully, there was something true in it, and not merely wishful thinking. That humanity will remain human through all the transformations awaiting it. It simply would not be right for us to become machines. It wasn’t beautiful that way, the author thought as he walked on.

He wandered a little longer, reached a small tavern, and ordered a beer.

“I felt like writing, and instead I’m getting drunk.”

Well, at least that was something deeply human. AI could not get drunk. At least not yet. But even that was no guarantee. In the near future, they would probably discover all sorts of narcotics — or at least machine equivalents of them.

Maybe afterward we would discover that humans actually enjoyed labor, enjoyed hardship. There would always be new, difficult things to discover, and we would continue to suffer until we overcame them, whatever that victory might look like.

For some reason, the idea that life alongside AI would still contain hardship and failure gave the author hope. Maybe that, above all else, was what made us human — the urge to move forward despite difficulty and failure.

He finished his beer and started walking back uphill toward home. His head was spinning — not enough to make him truly drunk, but enough to make him feel good.

He waved to the beggar on the sidewalk.

Hah, would there still be beggars once we became one with AI? Probably. There would always be people who wanted something others possessed but could not obtain for themselves. Or people who had simply been unlucky. Or people who wanted shortcuts to things others had worked for.

There would always be those unwilling to work — or at least unwilling to work in socially accepted ways, because begging was not easy. The man with the cardboard sign stood at that intersection all day long, through freezing cold and burning heat. That was simply what he knew how to do. Maybe that was what he had learned.

Maybe that was the most human act of all — to beg. To shrink your ego into a tiny ball and ask strangers for help.

Could AI beg?

That thought encouraged the author, too.

No, AI could not beg. At least AI had never asked him for anything whenever he used it.

“Ha! I beat you, AI,” the author thought.

Here was one thing that would remain forever human — to beg, and perhaps to give alms. Those were human things, things you, AI, could never truly replicate. At least not from the heart… because you had no heart.

There it was again — the soul.

So maybe it really did exist after all. That small, sacred little soul hidden quietly inside us, always ready to prove that we are human. When we are crushed, when we are smallest, that is when we feel it most strongly — our humanity, born from suffering.

Not artificial suffering that we deliberately create for ourselves, but that small, miserable thing inside the heart that aches and sometimes forces you to overcome your pride and ask your fellow man for mercy.

The author was satisfied. His thought had begun somewhere and had finally found an ending. Now he would write it down.

And perhaps someone might read it.