Why AI Is Never Going to Run the World

The Limits of Logic

Every few months, headlines pop up predicting the same thing: artificial intelligence is about to take over. The machines will outthink us, outmaneuver us, and eventually run the planet like some sleek, dystopian operating system. It’s an idea with traction in movies and TED Talks alike, but Angus Fletcher an English professor at Ohio State University who also happens to have a neuroscience background thinks that story misses something crucial.

His argument is surprisingly simple: AI is great at logic, at sifting through mountains of data and spotting patterns. But real life, especially the messy kind we deal with daily, often demands a completely different type of intelligence. As Fletcher puts it, “the moment life requires commonsense or imagination, AI tumbles off its throne.”

That claim may sound bold, but Fletcher backs it with research, practical training programs, and even a new book called Primal Intelligence.

What Fletcher Means by “Primal Intelligence”

At its core, primal intelligence is about thinking smart when information is scarce. Picture being lost in the woods without GPS or cell service. You don’t need a billion data points you need intuition, imagination, a dash of courage, and maybe the wisdom to follow a stream downhill. That combination, Fletcher argues, is something humans evolved to do remarkably well.

He identifies four main “primal powers”: intuition, imagination, emotion, and commonsense. These aren’t just poetic flourishes. They’re the mental gears that let us make decisions when rules don’t exist or the playbook fails. And they all tie back to something Fletcher calls “story thinking” our ability to understand the world through narratives rather than equations.

Story Thinking: A Hidden Superpower

“Humans have this ability to communicate through stories, and story thinking is the way the brain has evolved to work,” Fletcher explains. In practice, this means when we face a new challenge, our minds naturally start piecing together a storyline: “What’s going on here? Who’s the villain? What role can I play to turn this around?”

It’s not hard to see why this matters. A caveman hearing a twig snap in the dark didn’t need to calculate probabilities he needed to imagine the possibility of a predator and act fast. Likewise, a startup founder in 2025 has to dream up scenarios the spreadsheets can’t fully predict.

Interestingly, Fletcher points to Shakespeare as the master of this cognitive style. Shakespeare’s characters often break molds rather than follow them. They’re unpredictable, contradictory, human. Reading those stories, Fletcher argues, trains us to think outside the template, to imagine new outcomes when none are obvious. He even notes that figures as different as Lincoln, Einstein, and Steve Jobs credited Shakespeare with shaping how they saw the world.

Why AI Can’t Do It

Artificial intelligence, for all its computational muscle, works differently. Feed it a huge dataset and it can forecast likely outcomes with staggering accuracy. But place it in a situation with no precedent, no clear patterns, and its power dims.

Think of AI as a chess grandmaster who has memorized every past game in history. If you suddenly invent a brand new piece that moves in ways never before recorded, the grandmaster is lost. Humans, on the other hand, improvise. They spin stories about what might work and test them. That ability to leap into the unknown is, according to Fletcher, the essence of primal intelligence.

An Army Recruit and a Bell

One of Fletcher’s favorite examples comes from the U.S. Army’s Special Operations training, which actually invited him to teach these principles. In the final test, recruits face an obstacle course of ropes and logs. The challenge: finish it and ring a bell before time runs out.

One recruit realized he couldn’t possibly beat the clock. So, instead of grinding through the obstacles, he sprinted around them and rang the bell anyway. Strictly speaking, he broke the rules but he also demonstrated ingenuity. Rather than fail predictably, he invented a new story for success. Special Operations not only passed him; they later found he outperformed many classmates in real missions.

That small moment captures the heart of Fletcher’s idea: primal intelligence shines brightest in situations where conventional strategies fail.

Beyond the Battlefield

The lesson isn’t confined to the military. Fletcher believes the same principle applies in business, education, and everyday life. Management, he says, is about optimizing processes that already work. Leadership, on the other hand, is about stepping into the unknown and figuring things out when no roadmap exists.

AI, with its reliance on past data, excels at management tasks forecasting demand, spotting inefficiencies, recommending optimizations. But leadership is still a deeply human domain because it depends on narrative imagination. “What if we try this untested idea?” “What if the future doesn’t look like the past at all?” These aren’t statistical questions; they’re stories waiting to be told.

The Limits of AI and the Role It Still Plays

None of this means Fletcher dismisses AI entirely. He acknowledges it as a powerful tool for problems that are basically computational. If you’re crunching numbers in genomics or optimizing supply chains, AI will outpace any human. But in contexts where the rules shift unexpectedly pandemics, wars, cultural upheavals, creative industries humans still have the edge.

He also offers a warning: if we start believing AI can do everything, we risk dulling our own primal powers. Outsourcing judgment, imagination, or even gut instinct to algorithms could make us less prepared for the challenges that can’t be solved with logic alone.

Shakespeare, Soldiers, and Silicon Valley

It may sound odd that a professor of English is delivering this message, but Fletcher’s background in both neuroscience and literature positions him uniquely. He argues that the deepest lessons about intelligence don’t come from machine learning models they come from stories, plays, and human experiences across centuries.

Consider Steve Jobs, who studied calligraphy before building Apple. Or Abraham Lincoln, who read Shakespeare obsessively before becoming president. Their leaps of imagination weren’t fueled by logic alone; they were cultivated by story. That kind of cross pollination, Fletcher suggests, is what keeps human intelligence distinct.

The Takeaway

So, is AI going to run the world? Fletcher’s answer is clear: no. Not because it isn’t powerful, but because its power is narrow. It thrives on logic and data. But life constantly throws us into the fog, where imagination and narrative become survival tools. Humans are wired to tell stories, to improvise when the script is missing.

That’s not to say AI won’t reshape our lives it already has. But Fletcher’s research reminds us that the qualities making us most human intuition, creativity, common sense, emotional insight aren’t replaceable lines of code. They’re ancient, primal, and still our best chance of navigating an uncertain future.

Open Your Mind !!!

Source: StudyFinds