There’s a post making the rounds on LinkedIn by Téa Smith that’s been sticking with me. It reads:
“Again
If you think AI is a good writer, sorry but you’re a bad writer
If you think AI is a good coder, sorry but you’re a bad coder
If you think AI is a good designer, sorry but you’re a bad designer
If you think AI is a good lawyer, sorry but you’re a bad lawyer
…cockroaches outnumber humans 1 billion to one. It still doesn’t make them a superior life form.”
Sharp. Biting. And let’s be honest — more than a little true.
But like most things in this brave new AI-powered world, the truth is more complicated.
On one hand, I agree with Téa. I’ve worked as a writer, a lawyer and a software executive. I know what it means to put in the hours, hone your craft, and produce work that isn’t just competent — but exceptional. And frankly, no AI I’ve seen yet can hold a candle to someone truly great at what they do.
On the other hand… I’ve also run businesses. Built teams. Fought deadlines. Stared down budgets. And in the real world, most of the time, you’re not hiring a Pulitzer Prize winner. You’re hiring someone who can get the job done — quickly, cheaply and well enough.
Which brings us back to cockroaches.
There’s a reason they’ve been around for 300 million years. They survive. They scale. They adapt. They may not be pretty, but they get the job done. That, in some sense, is what we’re dealing with in AI right now.
Is AI the Hemingway of prose? The Frank Lloyd Wright of design? The Thurgood Marshall of legal argument? No.
But can it pump out emails, generate website copy, draft contracts, debug a code snippet, or analyze a dataset 1,000 times faster than your average overworked, underpaid employee? You bet it can. According to Microsoft, it is 4x more accurate at diagnosing medical conditions than human doctors.
The uncomfortable truth is this: Most of what we do in our jobs doesn’t require brilliance. It requires consistency. Volume. Speed. Scale. And AI is very good at that.
So what does that mean for all the brilliant people out there? The good coders. The great writers. The brilliant designers and sharp legal minds?
It means we have to start making peace with a new reality: Being better than AI isn’t enough if AI is “good enough.”
Think about it. In any business where margins matter — and let’s be honest, that’s all of them — using a tool that’s 80% as good but 500% faster and cheaper isn’t a luxury, it’s a competitive necessity. At some level, it would be irresponsible not to use it.
So no, AI won’t replace great people. Not yet. But it will absolutely replace a whole lot of average ones, who are doing easily repeatable tasks that don’t require a lot of human ingenuity or intelligence. Maybe even a few good ones who refuse to adapt.
And that’s where the real tension lies.
You see to me, what Téa’s post really captured wasn’t just a critique of AI. It was a call to pride. A defense of human talent in a world that’s being overrun by silicon mediocrity. And it struck a nerve because a lot of people — maybe the majority — feel like they’re under threat.
Some are genuinely talented and frustrated that AI is being overhyped. Others are terrified they’ll be found out — that the robots really can do what they do, only better.
And some, frankly, just don’t want to learn a new tool. I get it. Change is exhausting. Especially when it’s this fast and this relentless.
But here’s the thing: Humans didn’t rise to the top of the food chain by refusing to use tools. We rose because we used tools better than anything else (at least on this planet). We didn’t out-muscle the saber-toothed cats — we outsmarted them.
So maybe it’s time to treat AI for what it really is, or what it can become: the most powerful tool we’ve ever created.
Not a competitor. A collaborator.
Let the cockroaches inherit the Earth — fine. But we’re the ones imagining, inventing, designing and building rocket ships that will take us beyond the Earth.
That word, imagining. That is key in my mind. It is human imagination that I am not sure will be duplicated by AI. Humans can dream. We can dream of a world beyond AI. We can dream of a world enhanced by AI. We can imagine what it will take to make our wildest dreams come true. AI will never dream (I think). It may hallucinate, but it doesn’t dream.
Here’s how I see it playing out:
In the Short Term:
AI is going to automate a huge swath of the routine work we do every day. Drafting boilerplate documents, writing standard code, designing social media graphics, transcribing meetings, managing inboxes, summarizing reports — the kind of tasks we spend 60-70% of our time on.
That’s a good thing. It frees up the humans to focus on higher-value, higher-creativity, higher-complexity tasks. You know, the stuff that makes us human in the first place.
In the Medium Term:
The dividing line between human and machine work will blur. Maybe you’re not just coding anymore — you’re directing an AI swarm to build and test modules. Maybe you’re not writing articles — you’re curating and refining AI-generated drafts. Maybe you’re not designing from scratch — you’re orchestrating visual systems.
This won’t be about replacement. It will be about augmentation. The best professionals will be the ones who learn how to direct the orchestra, not the ones insisting on playing every instrument themselves.
But in the Long Term?
Well, that’s the trillion-dollar question.
If we hit true AGI — artificial general intelligence — then all bets are off. Because it won’t just be faster. It’ll be smarter. More creative. More capable. And then what?
Do we enter a post-work society? A Star Trek-style utopia where humans explore art, philosophy and discovery while machines handle the heavy lifting? Do we finally redefine what success means, not in terms of productivity but in terms of purpose?
Or do we double down on economic competition, letting AI widen inequality and disrupt whole classes of work faster than we can retrain?
I don’t know. No one does. But the conversation needs to start now.
So yes, Téa — you’re right. AI isn’t a better writer. It’s just a faster one. And faster doesn’t always mean superior. But is it good enough?
Let’s not pretend that the world always rewards the best. More often than not, it rewards the scalable. The survivable.
The cockroach may not be elegant. But it’s still here.
And if we want to be here too? We have to always be building better tools — and how to use them.
Even the roachiest ones.
Alan Shimel is the founder and editor-in-chief of Techstrong Group. He is a recovering lawyer, serial entrepreneur, and proud human. For now.
