There’s a lot of conversation about AI these days, and I want to add my voice. I have a real passion for this, and I think the more voices we bring to the conversation, the better.
About three years ago, I started seeing articles about AI and immediately began doing research. Artificial intelligence, augmented intelligence, assisted intelligence—there are different names and different uses. For this conversation, I’m using “AI” broadly to talk about automated tools, including large language models.
My previous world—and a bit of my current world—is the insurance industry. For many people in that industry, AI feels like a godsend. And as a former executive in that world, I’ll say this unequivocally: I love what these tools can do in the right setting.
Let me give you a real-life example.
I do insurance consulting, and recently I needed to pull some very specific data points from more than 60 insurance and agency contracts for a client. I loaded the contracts into an AI tool—the flavor of the month, whatever you want to call it—and asked it to find those data points, give me the reference pages so I could check its work, and put the information into an Excel spreadsheet I could download.
That reference piece matters. I want to make sure the tool is doing its job, not pretending, fantasizing, or daydreaming.
I’ve been in the insurance industry for 30 years. I’ve reviewed contracts manually, both on a computer and, yes, with sticky notes and pieces of paper. One contract can take a few hours. Depending on the number of contracts, the whole process can take weeks.
More than 60 contracts? That would have taken me weeks.
In consulting, work is generally billed by the project or by the hour. A project like that could have cost $10,000, and that might even be a conservative estimate: finding the data, identifying where it came from, and organizing it so executive leadership could use it.
This particular AI tool took about 30 seconds to produce the output.
That is an amazing feat. It saves me time and lets me focus on work that can be more impactful for that client. Once I check the data, I can use my experience to say, “Here’s what I recommend. Change this. Look at that.” Instead of spending weeks gathering information, I can spend my time applying expertise. The client gets additional value for a lot less money.
Right about now, you might be thinking this is an article about the value of AI.
Not really! It’s about separation. As a data person and an entrepreneur, I can value AI in a very specific part of my life without believing it belongs everywhere.
Now let’s flip this over to the company I’m building: My Craft Dealer.
When I talk about the creative space, I mean something someone builds with their hands. Something that carries their fingerprint, their vision of what they want to bring into the world. Stamps, images, cards, paintings, sewing, quilts, bags, jewelry. I include movies and books in that creative world, too.
I don’t believe AI belongs there as a replacement for the human creator. And I will stand on that.
I think some very smart business professionals are trying to take the opportunity in my first story and apply it to this second space. But those are two different things.
The first story is about efficiency and financial value: helping a client get specific information in a useful format so they can make better business decisions. That is a specific use case, and I can see how it could be repeated in other settings.
Taking that same approach into the creative space and replacing the human factor with an AI model? I believe that’s wrong.
My concern is that people much further up the food chain than the artists are making decisions based on additional profit without giving the same consideration to the artistic, human element.
To me, this is a question of what we value. Think about disposable versus reusable diapers, homeschooling versus public school, or making your own clothes versus buying them. Those choices aren’t identical, but they remind me that convenience and efficiency aren’t the only ways to measure value. There is also the value someone sees in the homespun, the homegrown, and the process of making something themselves.
AI has a place in the world. That doesn’t mean it has a place replacing people in the creative sphere. Could AI have its own creative sphere? Sure. Go do that. But call it something else. Keep it separate.
I don’t want the work of someone who has bent over their stitching to make a pair of gloves, a hat, a scarf, or a pair of pants treated as the same thing as a machine turning out a mass-produced, AI-designed item. They simply aren’t in the same comparison space.
That distinction matters to me, especially as a small-business owner, entrepreneur, or solopreneur, whatever we’re calling it these days.
I created My Craft Dealer to support home crafters. If I had to name a major competitor, it would probably be Etsy. We aren’t identical, but we’re in that sphere.
Hearing about a company like Etsy using AI for its own gain makes me sad. I built My Craft Dealer to help crafters get their work out into the world without feeling like they have to give away a large share of what they earn. They want to do their craft and have someone help with the rest. That’s the idea.
My goal is to give these crafters a platform to sell what they make. And I take a significant amount of pride in this: I don’t touch up product pictures. I don’t use AI to create them.
I do run product descriptions through AI to help make sure they make sense. I may need help with the wording or formatting, but the description still needs to accurately reflect the product. I’m not changing the product or altering how it looks.
And yes, I’m using AI to help clean up this very message. I dictated this into a document, and I’m asking AI to remove the “umms,” tidy up the rambling, and make it cohesive. Then I’ll read every single word to make sure it sounds like me, says what I’m trying to say, and makes sense.
I’m not hand-sewing this message. I’m communicating a viewpoint, and I want other people to be able to understand it. For me, using a large language model to help with that communication is different from asking it to replace the creative work itself.
I take great pride in how I’m building My Craft Dealer. It saddens me to think of crafters being exploited by organizations that see only the bottom line. These are people making things, often against the odds, with their creative spirit, their playful heart, and so much of their soul. That deserves more than being replaced or treated as interchangeable with an AI-generated product.
So I’m writing this to say: I stand with the artists.
There needs to be a separation. And we should be celebrating the human element in the creative space—the artists, the crafters, and the creative minds who bring something of themselves to what they make.
