They say writers never die. We live in footnotes, margins, dog-eared pages, and unfinished sentences. But today, I am not so sure. Today, writers are not dying in ink and memory.....we are quietly being laid off, logged out, and replaced by something that never gets tired, never asks for a raise, and never doubts a sentence.
I lost my job because of AI.
That sentence still feels unreal to write. Not because technology is new....technology has always reshaped work.....but because writing was supposed to be the last refuge. Words were human. Stories were human. Struggle, voice, pain, humor.....these were things machines could not own. Or so we believed.
Now AI writes articles in seconds, captions in milliseconds, poems without heartbreak, columns without hunger. It does not stay up at night wrestling with a metaphor. It does not rewrite the same paragraph twenty times wondering if it still matters. It simply produces. Efficient. Polished. Endless.
And the world applauds.
Companies do not ask anymore, Who wrote this? They ask, How fast can we publish? Creativity is no longer measured by depth but by speed. Writers are told to “adapt,” as if adaptation does not come with grief. As if losing your livelihood is just a settings update.
But here is what worries me most: when AI comes alive, writers do not just lose jobs.....we risk losing meaning.
Writing was never just content. It was witness. It was resistance. It was memory. Writers documented wars before algorithms could summarize them. Writers named injustice before data could chart it. Writers turned silence into language when silence was safer.
AI can imitate style, but it cannot inherit consequence. It can replicate tone, but it cannot carry responsibility. It does not bleed when words are misused. It does not fear censorship. It does not remember hunger, exile, or loss.
And yet, here I am.....jobless, staring at a screen.....still writing.
Because maybe writers do not die when AI comes alive. Maybe we are being tested.
Tested to write not because it pays, but because it must be written. Tested to tell stories machines cannot afford to tell.....the slow ones, the uncomfortable ones, the deeply human ones. Tested to stop chasing algorithms and start chasing truth again.
AI may write faster. It may write cheaper. It may write more.
But it cannot write from loss.
And this column.....born from unemployment, fear, and stubborn hope.....is proof that while AI is alive, the writer in me refuses to die.
#WeTakeAStand #OpinYon #OpinYonNews #MarchanismManifesto