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There’s a quiet fear no one wants to admit out loud.

It shows up in side-eyes during team meetings, in late-night doomscrolling, in that subtle question echoing through our generation’s collective anxiety:


What’s the point?
If artificial intelligence is going to write the next great novel, design the next viral campaign, launch the next billion-dollar business — faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than you or I ever could — then why try? Why put in the hours, the sweat, the effort?

Why bother getting better?

It’s a question that haunts not just creatives or coders or marketers. It’s haunting humanity. The unsettling idea that maybe we’ve reached the edge of usefulness. That the race we’ve been running — to be better, smarter, more skilled — is about to be won by a machine that doesn’t sleep, doesn’t feel, doesn’t forget.

But here’s what we forget in return:

We don’t grow because the world demands it.
We grow because something inside us refuses to stop.

AI might automate what we do. But it cannot automate why we do it.

The Fallacy of Replacement

Let’s be real. Yes, AI will disrupt industries. It already is. Whole workflows reduced to prompts. Creative outputs generated in seconds. Copy, code, concept — replicated, iterated, shipped. And it’s only just beginning.

But here’s a truth too many are missing:

Being better was never just about productivity.

You didn’t start painting to beat an algorithm. You didn’t learn to lead because you thought a robot couldn’t. You didn’t choose empathy, or poetry, or patience because it would get you ahead.

You chose those things because they made you more human.

Better was never the enemy of automation. Better was the quiet rebellion against stagnation. It’s what built pyramids, painted ceilings, fought injustice, and sent ships across oceans.

And now — we’re being called to define “better” again.

What AI Can’t Touch

Let’s get philosophical for a second.

AI can simulate kindness.
It can write poetry about grief.
It can mimic your voice, your humor, even your childhood trauma.

But it doesn’t know what any of it means.

It’s never held a dying parent’s hand.
It’s never wept at the sound of a song you haven’t heard since you were twelve.
It doesn’t get nervous before an interview.
It doesn’t get butterflies before a kiss.

It doesn’t hope.
It doesn’t dream.
It doesn’t choose.

And therein lies the point. You do.

The Point of Getting Better

The point isn’t to compete with the machine.
It’s to remember what the machine can never be.

Better isn’t about being faster. It’s about being braver.
It’s about choosing excellence in a world that rewards convenience.
It’s about creating not because we must — but because we can.

When we choose to become better — as professionals, as friends, as partners, as humans — we are declaring, in defiance and in hope:

“I still matter. My effort still matters. My growth still matters.”

History will remember those who embraced the tools, yes.
But it will honor those who never lost their soul while using them.

One Last Thing

Progress will automate the world.
But only purpose will save it.

So write the damn poem.
Learn the new skill.
Start the business.
Show up, even when it’s hard.
Love people when it’s inconvenient.
Be better — not because the machine is watching…

…but because someone who needed your humanity is.

And that, my friend, will always be the point.

Scratch is the world’s largest coding community for children and a coding language with a simple visual interface that allows young people to create digital stories, games, and animations. Scratch is designed, developed, and moderated by the Scratch Foundation, a nonprofit organization. Help the little ones to know how to code

The Warning from History

On the morning of January 6, 2021, the world watched as a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. It was a moment of reckoning—chaos unleashed in the heart of the world’s most celebrated democracy.

Some called it a rebellion, others an insurrection. But to an ancient Greek historian named Polybius, it would have been something else entirely: inevitable.

More than 2,000 years ago, Polybius introduced a concept that few remember today, but whose relevance has never been greater: Anakyklosis—the Cycle of Political Evolution. It’s the idea that all governments, no matter how just or noble, are doomed to fall into predictable patterns of corruption, decay, and rebirth. It’s a cycle we have seen time and again, from the fall of Rome to the rise of authoritarian populism in the 21st century.

And if history tells us anything, it’s that the cycle is turning once more in 2025.

The Cycle of Power: From Democracy to Mob Rule

Polybius laid out the six stages of government like a tragic script, one that civilizations unknowingly follow, again and again:

  1. Monarchy (Rule of One – Benevolent) – A strong, wise leader emerges to bring order to chaos.
  2. Tyranny (Rule of One – Corrupt) – Power corrupts, and the leader becomes despotic.
  3. Aristocracy (Rule of the Best – Benevolent) – The best and brightest take over, governing with wisdom.
  4. Oligarchy (Rule of the Few – Corrupt) – The elites grow greedy, consolidating power for themselves.
  5. Democracy (Rule of the Many – Benevolent) – The people rise up, demanding a government that serves them.
  6. Ochlokratia (Mob Rule – Corrupt) – Democracy descends into chaos, manipulated by demagogues and misinformation, leading to collapse and the rise of a new monarchy.

Sound familiar? It should. Because right now, the world’s great democracies are teetering on the edge of ochlokratia—mob rule. The signs are all around us in 2025 and maybe earlier than that!

America, Rome, and the Dangers of Late-Stage Democracy

History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. Consider the fall of the Roman Republic:

  • A democratic system once admired, where power was shared among elected officials.
  • A growing divide between the elite and the working class, fueling discontent.
  • The rise of populist leaders who promised to “fix the system” while eroding its foundations.
  • Political violence becoming normalized, as factions turned to force instead of debate.

By the time Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE, Rome had already crossed a point of no return. Democracy had rotted from within, paving the way for empire.

Now, look around in 2025. The warning signs are eerily similar:

  • Rising wealth inequality—a handful of billionaires hold more wealth than entire nations, with AI-driven economies exacerbating disparities.
  • Populist strongmen winning elections by exploiting public disillusionment, now amplified by deepfake propaganda and AI-manipulated media.
  • A disinformation crisis, where truth is drowned in a sea of conspiracy theories, with major news organizations struggling to compete with viral AI-generated misinformation.
  • Governments increasingly paralyzed by polarization, unable to solve real problems, as social unrest escalates globally.
  • The rise of authoritarian tendencies, with leaders undermining democratic institutions under the guise of “protecting the people,” now armed with digital surveillance and AI-powered state control.

Like Rome before it, modern democracy is not dying from external threats. It is crumbling from within—now at an accelerated pace thanks to technology.

The Digital Age and the Acceleration of Ochlokratia

Polybius never could have predicted social media, but if he had, he would have seen it as the ultimate accelerator of political decay.

In 2025, the situation has worsened. AI-driven content manipulation, hyper-personalized propaganda, and algorithm-driven outrage cycles have turned democracy into a battleground of perception over reality. Deepfake videos, voice clones, and AI-generated political figures blur the line between truth and fiction. The digital public square, once seen as a beacon of democratic engagement, has become an ecosystem of rage-fueled disinformation, rewarding extremism over nuance, engagement over truth.

And so we find ourselves in the final stage of democracy—the moment where people, manipulated by demagogues, AI-driven propaganda, and digital algorithms, turn against the very system meant to protect them.

Can We Break the Cycle?

If the ancient Greeks were right, the natural next step is a return to authoritarian rule—a strongman rising from the ashes, promising to “fix” the broken system, but at the cost of freedom.

But history is not destiny. The cycle is a warning, not a prophecy.

Democracies do not fail overnight. They erode, piece by piece, as citizens grow complacent, as leaders exploit fear, as institutions weaken under the weight of corruption. And yet, history has also shown that the fate of a nation is not written in stone—it is written by those who refuse to let history repeat itself.

The solution does not lie in nostalgia for the past, but in rebuilding trust, strengthening institutions, and restoring civic engagement. It lies in resisting the allure of simple answers to complex problems. It lies in demanding accountability from leaders, media, and ourselves.

In 2025, it also means tackling the AI-driven erosion of democracy, ensuring that technology serves the people rather than manipulates them. We must regulate AI in politics, educate citizens on digital literacy, and push for transparent governance in an age where deception has never been easier.

Polybius gave us the diagnosis. The question now is: Will we choose a different ending?

We stand at a crossroads, just as Rome did, just as every great civilization has before us.

The forces of history are powerful, but they are not absolute.

As Martin Luther King, Jr1.,  once said, “The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, but it does not bend on its own.” We, the people, must be the ones to bend it.

Because democracy is not a given. It is a choice. And that choice is ours to make—before history that always tends to repeat itself makes it for us.

The Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) at Adobe is a community of media and technology companies, non-profits, creatives, educators and many others working to promote adoption of the open C2PA standard for content authenticity and provenance. Explore the CAI’s open-source tools based on C2PA Content Credentials, verifiable details or digital “nutrition labels” about how content was created. via

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