To Create is Human
We are all, all of us, storytellers to some degree. It’s one of humanity’s earliest pursuits. The campfires may have changed, but the idea is still the same: to entertain, inform, convey facts, tell tall tales, or simply to pass on what we know.
Much has been made, as of late, of technological advances that purport to create art without the need for a pesky human. Always imitating, AI “art” lacks soul. It can be seen in the dead eyes, the uncanny valley features, the samey grammatical structure that screams to the heavens that no human directly crafted the image or text offered up.
True art carries with it the spark of humanity. The desires of the creator. The passion of the person who, unlike an energy hungry algorithm, spent time, sweat, tears, and yes, sometimes blood in the very act of creation. This cannot be duplicated by machines.
Ben Plopper is a writer – a human writer – who has been writing for as long as he can remember. He started at a young age and while his earlier works were, let’s be honest, not good at all, Ben has practiced and improved over the years. In addition to a professional career as a business and technical writer (they asked me if I was a technical writer, and I said, “technically, I am a writer,” and I was hired), Ben is also a rising playwright, creating art for the stage, the one place where AI and robots can’t (yet) replace the very human act of collaborative storytelling. He runs a brand-new audio drama company called Petit Guignol Productions, LLC, where he is busy creating stories inspired by the times where families gathered around their radios for their entertainment. He dabbles, as well, in performances on the stage, having performed in 8 live productions between April 2024 and February 2026.