Reclaiming Human Creativity with AI

When I was a child, I wasn’t afraid of the blank page.

Crayons on construction paper. My old typewriter with its stubborn keys. Whatever the medium, there was always something wanting to come through. Imagination had space. There was time to daydream. No urgency to make it "useful."

Now, give an adult a blank page and ask them to draw how they're feeling. You can feel the panic rise. We freeze. We judge. We say we "can’t draw."

What happened?

Somewhere between performance reviews and project deadlines, we lost touch with the part of ourselves that knew how to follow wonder. We replaced play with productivity, and traded curiosity for efficiency.

And here's the thing: the system taught us to.

We inherited a model of work from the Industrial Revolution. Eight-hour shifts, five days a week, output measured by time and visibility. It worked on assembly lines. But it doesn't map well to minds doing creative, emotional, or strategic work.

The 40-hour week wasn't designed to nurture insight or flow. It was designed to optimize consistency and control.

And yet, many of us still measure our value in hours logged. We feel guilty resting. We feel unproductive thinking. We forget that some of the most transformative ideas come while walking the dog, doodling in the margins, or staring out the window.

Enter AI as a cultural mirror.

Used carelessly, it accelerates the hamster wheel: more content, more emails, more "productivity."

But used with intention, AI has the potential to do something radical.

It can help us reclaim space.

It can:

• Draft the tedious bits so we can stay in the deep work.

• Co-create in ways that nudge our own ideas further.

• Free us from the busywork, so we can return to the blank page with anticipation, not dread.

I’m starting to see glimmers of this in workplaces. Some teams are using AI in brainstorming sessions to build on human ideas and stretch them further, helping surface unexpected connections and nudging new lines of thought. Others are exploring how AI can support program design by referencing past work, helping identify what’s worked before and why. 

AI tools are offering sharper insights into donor behavior, which lets organizations tailor outreach in more personal, resonant ways. These quiet experiments are already underway. They hint at what’s possible when we let AI carry the mechanics (data, patterns, repetition) so we can carry the meaning, the connection, the spark.

And that possibility comes with a responsibility: to choose how we relate to these tools.

Right now, there’s a beautiful grey zone - a space of experimentation. Policies are still catching up. Norms haven’t solidified. Which means we get to shape how AI lives in our work.

We get to ask: what kind of workplace culture are we building? What values are we baking into the tools we adopt? What future of work do we actually want?

One that replicates the productivity trap?

Or one that makes room for presence, imagination, and human-to-human connection?

This is what I care about as a change leader. Not just what AI can do, but what it can free us to become.

Because I believe there’s a part of all of us (that is maybe tucked away, maybe tired, maybe waiting) that remembers the joy of the blank page. The part that wasn’t afraid to start something, just because it felt alive.

Maybe it's time to make space for that part again.

Maybe it's time to lead like that version of ourselves is still here.

And maybe, the future of work could be MORE human than we ever imagined.

About

Sarah Downey Sarah Downey is a Canada-based consultant helping nonprofits adopt AI safely, ethically, and confidently through governance clarity and policy development.