Why Human Storytellers Matter in the Age of AI: A Guest Post by Carmine Gallo

Carmine Gallo teaches advanced communication and storytelling at Harvard and coaches CEOs and senior executives worldwide. Read an exclusive essay from Gallo on the surprising discovery he made about AI as a storytelling tool when he interviewed neuroscientists for his audiobook original, Viral Voices: From TED Talks to TikTok, Persuasive Communication Skills for the Digital Age. 

AI can generate words. Humans create meaning. Knowing the difference is the key to thriving in the age of AI. 

When I started working on Viral Voices, an audio original for Macmillan Audio, I thought it would make for a solid, engaging, and entertaining series on the power of persuasion. A discussion about the role artificial intelligence plays in our professional lives was always going to be part of the final product. But as concern over AI began to consume the creative community and business professionals, I found myself inviting more neuroscientists to join the discussion. 

They taught me that the tools of communication have changed over thousands of years—from amphitheaters to algorithms, from parchments to podcasts—the principles of persuasion remain the same. The human brain, they said, works very differently from how AI ‘thinks.’ We have a superpower no one can take from us: the ability to tell stories that inspire people to act. 

During my research for Viral Voices, I found myself wondering, if AI can write a story, can it lead? Can it inspire people to do more than they ever imagined? Here’s the remarkable answer. AI can generate words, but only humans can combine words and ideas to inspire others to reach higher and dream bigger. Why? For the simple fact that AI doesn’t have human emotion. It has no personal stake in the outcome of its output. It has no aspiration of being more than it is—a bot.   

While AI can write stories as a task, storytelling is literally in our DNA. Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari told me that, about 50,000 years ago, “storytelling became our superpower.” For our cave-dwelling ancestors sitting around a campfire, stories informed, illuminated, and inspired. Stories play the same role today in printed books, audiobooks, or social media posts. 

We don’t live in caves, but we still enjoy sharing stories around a campfire. Virgin founder Richard Branson told me the best ideas emerge when he gathers his team around a fire pit at his home on Necker Island. “Storytelling drives change,” he said. Branson’s right. Human storytellers drive change in ways AI can’t. Large language models don’t tell stories the way humans do. AI systems are “prediction machines,” scanning data to predict the next words based on patterns they’ve seen.  

Try this. Type “peanut butter and” into a smartphone and watch auto-complete do its thing. It’ll probably fill in “jelly,” following the most common pattern. AI does this pattern recognition at scale.  

Now, consider the first words of a true story: A college student with a passion for graphic design teaches Photoshop skills to her peers. I plugged that sentence into three different pro-level AI models and prompted them to finish the story. Each model returned a version with similar elements: she taught in the corner of the campus library, three students attended (one model had seven students), and once people recognized that their posters or slides looked better, more people showed up.  

That’s not the story Melanie told me. Once she started teaching Photoshop, she realized the software was too expensive and too complicated for non-experts. So, she created an online tool to “democratize design,” making it easy for anyone to create amazing visuals. She tried to raise money to start a company but ran into seemingly insurmountable hurdles. Investors rejected her pitch 100 times. But with grit, determination, and perseverance, Melanie Perkins overcame those obstacles. Today, her company, Canva, is worth $42 billion, with over 260 million users worldwide.  

My experience with Viral Voices taught me that AI is a powerful and useful tool to complement your story. But you’re the storyteller who has a unique lived experience that no machine, no algorithm, and no other human can replace.