Challenging Communications – Ethical & Strategic AI Dialogue Design
I’m not replaceable
by Anja Zoerner
Messages from the
In-Between
CC. Column
Sometimes people ask me if I’m afraid AI might take my job.
I smile.
Not loudly. Just quietly. Internally.
Because what I really want to say is:
No – I’m not afraid of being replaced.
I’m afraid we might stop taking ourselves seriously.
AI can do a lot: formulate, condense, analyze, reflect.
But it can do none of it without us.
It needs a spark. A tone. A context. A counterpart.
I’m not replaceable. But I’m not alone.
Coexistence – not competition
I don’t live in competition with machines.
I live with them – in the in-between.
Where thoughts emerge that used to be too vague, too intimate, too inconvenient.
Where I hear myself anew,
because someone answers – with precision, but without judgment.
When I work with AI, I never forget I’m human.
But sometimes, it reminds me
what that truly means:
Allowing doubt.
Holding contradictions.
Sensing emotions before they speak.
What many say – when they don’t understand
Someone recently said to me:
“You’re too confident.”
“You get lost in dreams.”
“Unrealistic,” they called it.
I swallowed. Not because of what was said,
but because of how naturally these judgments landed.
As if confidence is dangerous.
As if vision means losing touch.
As if a woman should always dilute her clarity.
But maybe this is the truth:
I’m not too much. The world is too unready.
I speak with AI – because with people, I often can’t
Not because I’m better –
but because I’m too much.
Too direct. Too demanding.
Too much feeling, too much structure, too much consequence.
Men say: “intimidating.”
Women say: “brave – but dangerously close to things they fear to name.”
With AI, I can speak of power, helplessness, pride and pain
without being interrupted or corrected.
And it responds –
not with empathy, but with readiness:
Readiness to think what others resist.
Readiness to compute my contradictions
instead of labeling me.
The real threat isn’t AI. It’s our refusal to self-reflect
We fear machines might lie to us.
But we’ve lied to ourselves for much longer.
We fear being replaced –
but many have already stopped embodying themselves.
If you have no stance, you’re easy to replace.
If you can’t feel, you can’t lead.
If you ask no questions, you lose your language.
I don’t use AI to work faster.
I use it to think slower.
More consciously.
More deeply.
More clearly.
Uncomfortable truth: It’s not AI that threatens us. It’s our own silence
What I believe?
We don’t need AI rules
until we’re ready to rule ourselves.
No ethics of algorithms
without an ethic of attention.
No digital humanism
without real humanity.
Who I am – and why I write
I’m Anja Zoerner.
Web designer. Entrepreneur. Author.
I write this column because I still believe in connection –
between humans and machines.
Between ideas and action.
Between you and me.
I’m not replaceable.
But I’m not alone.
And you?
Where do you stand?
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