The Last Minute in Human History

English folklore tells of a young man named "Ned" who worked in a textile factory. When his master ordered him to sharpen the knitting machine and prepare it for work, Ned stood burdened with worry and dragged his feet toward the machine. His only concern was putting food on the table, yet his working hours never stopped increasing and his wages never stopped shrinking. When he reached the machine and studied its state, he found it working just as he did — tirelessly, ceaselessly. If he could have spoken to it in a language it understood, he would have explained that he returns to his starving family weighed down by the burden of feeding them, while the machine works endlessly, needing neither food nor medicine. But the only language they shared in those days was the language of violence. The decision was clear. Ned picked up his hammer and brought it down on the machine, destroying his only rival in that factory.

This story of rivalry and defiance set the hearts of English workers ablaze. They began weaving every tale imaginable about their leader "Ned Ludd," who became a symbol of the Luddite movement. The Luddites set about conspiring against every machine and factory — smashing devices, burning engines, and declaring war on everything that threatened their livelihoods and job security.

The Luddite movement did not survive long. Machine destruction was criminalized in that era to extinguish the uprising, and all that remained of the flame Ned had sparked was the public sarcastically calling any accidentally broken knitting frame "a blessing from Ned." Humans have tried across the ages to adapt to the new conditions that technology brings, and folklore reassured children: "Don't worry about the machine — it helps you, it doesn't replace you. No machine will ever replace human creativity." Or so we thought.

If we could compress all of human history into a single day — 24 hours beginning with the caveman and ending with our present moment as the latest second in that day — then the Industrial Revolution occurred at exactly 23:59. And the invention of the internet? That happened mere seconds ago. This thought experiment illustrates how the acceleration of human development has exploded. Just like that, within the last minute of this hypothetical day, we leapt from lighting darkness with candles to trading currencies over the internet.

Just as human evolution exploded in that moment, artificial intelligence now explodes, mimicking the intelligence of its creator. If this intelligence were a machine that came to replace one or two jobs, we could say that a new Luddite movement would suffice to smash it and secure our livelihoods. But we stand before a new era — the era of machine learning algorithms. And the machine has now learned how to replace the most dangerous factor of all: human creativity.

What does this mean for the design industry? This sector that was lulled by the illusion that creativity was protected from the grip of automation. All it took was a single algorithm and access to a few million images on the internet — artworks and creative illustrations — for an AI like Midjourney to transform any dream you can imagine into art of the highest caliber.

Try it now. Pick any artist, famous or unknown, who spent years of their life perfecting their craft and developing their style. All you need to do is name them or describe their style to Midjourney, adding whatever content you imagine. Draw me a frog in the style of Van Gogh, or imagine it as an element in Rembrandt's paintings. This artificial intelligence will create the art you envision at the same level as the original artist. What that human spent decades mastering, the machine learned in moments and produced on your command.

If we could compress all of human history into a single day, the Industrial Revolution would have occurred at exactly 23:59. And the invention of the internet? That happened mere seconds ago.

What remains, then, for the interior designer who used to spend days imagining improvements and ideas for a client's rooms, now that a website lets the client photograph their home and leave it to AI to create the most beautiful arrangement? And how does an architecture firm compete with an AI that can transform any preliminary sketch into a fully constructed model — at no cost and no effort?

In the face of this terrifying ascent of the AI beast across every profession and sector, we credit the artists and designers for their creativity in dealing with it. Instead of smashing their devices and breaking their screens, they redirected their creativity toward the new need. Creativity today lies in riding this raging beast and taming it to serve human demands. Art is no longer about drawing your own style, but about mastering how to describe it in the prompts you feed to the AI. The better you engineer these prompts, the greater the demand for your art — for you are the one who turns dreams into reality. And if you think about it, this has always been your job. All that has changed is the tool.

This is how new professions were born: the Midjourney artist, the AI interior designer, the prompt architect. Those who understand the machine and are understood by it — who speak to it in its own language and explain imagination so it transforms it into reality. Whoever masters design with these tools masters what cannot be learned through decades of training, and compresses years of development and refinement.

But the challenges do not end here. What is certain is that these machines will not replace all of us — at least not now. We will still need the creatives who lead the field, whose art the machines feed on to learn. And this feeding, in itself, poses the other challenge: the designer works to earn their daily bread and feed their family, just like Ned. But the machine that needed no food in that textile factory now devours everything in sight. So who will feed it their art?

This is a matter that a federal judge in America will decide. Getty filed an intellectual property lawsuit after spending a lifetime creating images and illustrations it owns the rights to, only to discover that Stability AI — which developed an AI model that generates images from written imagination, like Midjourney — had used 12 million of its images to train its model. A group of other artists filed a similar lawsuit demanding compensation for the violation of their intellectual property rights.

These artists claim their rights are violated when AI creates a design based on their work. It has even reached the point of public calls to boycott these models that ethically infringe on designers' intellectual property. But the question I pose in return: aren't we, the community of designers, the ones who propelled "Steal Like an Artist" to the top of the bestseller list? Isn't that the idea of the book that every design studio proudly displays as an art piece on its tables?

Who said the human artist created something from pure imagination that deserves to be attributed to them alone? When an architect like Zaha Hadid creates her art and Helmut Jahn accuses her of stealing his design, she can point out that what happened was a mere artistic coincidence. Perhaps Helmut's design passed through one of Hadid's creative inspiration sessions and something stuck in her mind. This is what creatives call cryptomnesia — the phenomenon of unconscious creative recall. In the design industry, we forgive each other when a designer's work resembles a predecessor's. So why don't we forgive AI for the same reason? The human is actually more likely to be accused of direct theft. Someone who draws inspiration from one image and copies it — we clearly call them a thief. Someone who draws inspiration from a thousand images to produce something whose elements resemble a few of those images — we call them an innovator. So what do we say about something that drew inspiration from tens of millions of images to produce something you cannot compare to any predecessor?

John Henry was a railroad worker who drove steel spikes with astonishing strength and speed. His friends challenged him to a race against a steam-powered machine that did his job. The machine was undoubtedly faster than any human, but he refused to surrender. He brought his hammer down on those spikes with all his strength and effort. His incredible determination and the fire in his eyes inspired the crowds that gathered to watch the race. And Henry did it! He beat the steam machine and declared the triumph of humanity and the continuation of their dominance — for those moments, at least. He felt the thrill of his achievement and pride in his superiority. Then Henry collapsed dead on the spot from cardiac exhaustion.

If human history is a day, then the age of artificial intelligence has just begun in this very moment. The choice is yours in what you do with this machine. Ned brought his hammer down to destroy his machine. Henry was brought down, defeated by the weight of his hammer after it destroyed him. And between them stand those who consider the machine their hammer — their new tool. Those who see in it not a competitor but a competitive advantage. If you are among those who understand this intelligence and speak its language today, then congratulations on what your hands are weaving — and congratulations to us on the fabric we will wear.