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KK Kevin Kelly Kevin Kelly Senior Maverick, Wired, a magazine I co-founded in 1993.

“I would be surprised if there was something created that touched a lot of people, and humans had very little to do with it. Everything that I know about humans so far suggests that one of the main jobs that humans will have in the future is being human. We like being around other humans. We like human sense of humor. I think AIs will be funny, but they will have an alien sense of humor. It'll be like Spock, right? It's like, yeah, I'm around you, but I much prefer being around Kirk.”

Freakonomics Radio · Ideas & Essays · October 2026

“I would be surprised if there was something created that touched a lot of people, and humans had very little to do with it. Everything that I know about humans so far suggests that one of the main jobs that humans will have in the future is being human. We like being around other humans. We like human sense of humor. I think AIs will be funny, but they will have an alien sense of humor. It'll be like Spock, right? It's like, yeah, I'm around you, but I much prefer being around Kirk.” — Kevin Kelly, Freakonomics Radio

Context

Stephen Dubner asked whether people will ever want AI-generated creative work en masse, given how few AI works people return to so far. Kelly, a longtime technology writer and self-described optimist, answers with his view of what humans will still be for.

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Transcript

Freakonomics Radio Around 18:00 into the episode
Kevin Kelly

Very, very few. And one of the things I've noticed is I will watch an AI-generated this or that, and there's very few that are returned to.

Stephen Dubner

Why do you think there are so few so far? Is it that there are so few so far, or there will never be many AI-generated, let's call it creative works that humans want to consume en masse?

Kevin Kelly

I would be surprised if there was something created that touched a lot of people, and humans had very little to do with it. Everything that I know about humans so far suggests that one of the main jobs that humans will have in the future is being human. We like being around other humans. We like human sense of humor. I think AIs will be funny, but they will have an alien sense of humor. It'll be like Spock, right? It's like, yeah, I'm around you, but I much prefer being around Kirk. And so I think that will be our job is just to be human, to have small talk, to hold someone's hand, to be there, to make a joke, to be creative in the way that we're creative. And that's very appealing to us.

Stephen Dubner

Have you run across the AI-generated actress named Tilly Norwood?

Kevin Kelly

Yes.

Stephen Dubner

What do you think of her?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Freakonomics Radio

“I think the paths for AI where it goes wrong are many and frequent and easy. I think the path where everything goes right is narrower and harder to navigate, and that we can't do it accidentally, inadvertently. We actually have to imagine it first and imagine the details and then believe that we can make them.” — Kevin Kelly, Freakonomics Radio “Indie gaming has an audience that truly hates AI, right? And every indie gamer is under tremendous pressure to not say they're using AI. Except, of course, you'd be very foolish to not use AI to help you code… There's this public-private perception gap. … If you survey students, about 60% of them say they use AI, but they say 90% of the people around them use AI.” — Ethan Mollick, Freakonomics Radio