Does AI make us more human? In her recent video, Julia McCoy, one of the early pioneers in AI content marketing, says that she and her family made a conscious choice to move away from technology — to rural Tennessee, to a real flesh-and-blood community, to forests, to soil-grown food, to a church, to the mountains.
In her video, titled Mountains Over Microchips, she reflects on an uncanny trend produced by the rise of AI: the more advanced AI becomes, the more we humans begin to reflect on what it means to be human.
What is it about me that’s irreplaceable?
According to Julia, people are awakening to the unbridgeable gap between the real and the artificial and are making a conscious choice to move closer to the real. The more the artificial is forced upon us, the more we realize how deeply we desire what is real.
Large AI companies push the narrative: “Upgrade or die” — suggesting that if you do not jump on the AI wagon, you will become obsolete. And yet, Elon Musk was reportedly surprised not to see a flood of volunteers to test his new Neuralink brain chip — an interface between machine and human.
The human mind can be muddled by slogans; the human heart cannot. The heart senses a difference the mind struggles to articulate. As Julia observes, in 2025–26 more and more people have chosen to become homesteaders.
The “whole foods” movement continues to spread across the globe. The price of young hens is rising — people want real eggs and real meat. The rise of the artificial awakens us to what the real feels like. The artificial may fool our eyes — but not our hearts.
In our heart of hearts, we know that real art feels different from AI-generated one. We know that real bread tastes different from synthetic substitutes. We know that real, eye-to-eye conversations with flesh-and-blood people are vastly different from Zoom calls. We know that people in person feel different from the same people on a screen.
Screens are better than nothing, but worse than everything. And we, as humans, need everything.
Perhaps the simplest way to capture what is happening to humanity is through Hans Christian Andersen’s absolute metaphor in The Nightingale.
An Emperor in China hears about a humble nightingale whose song is so beautiful that it moves listeners to tears. He summons the bird to the palace, and its song brings him joy every day.
But one day, the Emperor receives a gift — a jeweled mechanical nightingale. It is dazzling and predictable, singing on command whenever the Emperor desires. The living nightingale is gradually forgotten and eventually flies away.
In time, the mechanical bird breaks. The Emperor falls gravely ill. As Death approaches, the real nightingale returns and sings beside his bed. Its living song restores his strength, and Death itself flees.
“And the Nightingale sang so sweetly that the blood coursed quicker and quicker through the Emperor’s weak limbs, and even Death listened and said, ‘Go on, little Nightingale, go on!’”
Death then returns all the treasures it had taken:
And Death gave back each of these treasures for a song, and the Nightingale went on singing. And he sang of the quiet churchyard, where the white roses grow, where the elder trees blossom, and where the fresh grass is watered by the tears of the living.
Then Death felt a longing for his garden, and like a cold white mist he floated out of the window.”
The Nightingale is the undying symbol of the real. When we hear, see, and touch the real, we come alive. Death itself longs to hear the real and will surrender its treasures for a song — the Song.
